This weeks lab and material is all about flow mapping! Flow maps are maps that illustrate movement from region to region on the geographic scale. These maps use lines of various proportional widths in order to convey both quantitative or qualitative data. There are five primary types of flow line maps. Distributive flow maps which show the movement of people or goods between geographic regions. Network flow maps which depict network patterns such as transportation systems. Radial flow maps like the one I created for this weeks lab that shows migration to a specific region from other geographic regions. Finally, continuous flow maps which show specific continuous data such as winds or ocean currents and telecommunication flow maps which depict networks such as telecommunication and the internet.
For this lab, I was tasked with creating a flow map that shows migration from the various geographic continental regions to the United States (see below):
This map shows all the regions where people have migrated from to come to the United States. I created flow lines that are proportional to the number of migrants from each region so the largest flow line is from the region of North America and the smallest is from the Oceania region. Included in this map is also an inset choropleth map of the United States showing the percentage of total immigrants per state so the user can get a sense of where most immigrants go when they migrate to the U.S. For this map, I was required to add a stylistic effect so I color coded my flow lines in order to better represent them in my legend. While this effect does make the map look a bit busy, I believe that it can benefit the viewer to help distinguish the change in immigrants from each geographic region. This assignment was fully created in Adobe Illustrator and one thing I particularly struggled with and need to practice is making smoother more continuous lines. Next week I look forward to jumping to the other side of the mapping spectrum to dot mapping and as always ~Map On
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