Map Design and Composition (with a touch of Gestalt)

Map design and the principles of cartography are a bit of a theme this week, it would appear.  Gestalt Theory comes into play in this as well, which is of interest to me, as the whole "seeing the forest for the trees" and "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" ideas of cognition always fascinated me in psychology courses.  The Gestalt ideas of perception are useful when it comes to designing an effective map- namely in considering how the various map elements will be perceived by the map user.  Concepts like Similarity (cognitively grouping objects according to their general shape) and  Figure-Ground relationships (perceiving certain objects as closer, and thus more important, based on their relative size) come into play in the design of an effective map.

  
In consideration of these Gestalt principles I used the same symbol for the 3 different types of schools, but changed the size and color to differentiate between elementary, middle and high schools.  Their shape similarity ideally allows the viewer to immediately recognize that all of the point symbols are schools.  I also made the school symbol colors more vibrant and saturated against a more subdued and pastel background palette, which allows them to better stand out, as they are the main thematic content of the map.  The background information, like streets and parks, are shaded in the lightest grey possible, which allows for a certain level of visibility, but doesn't interfere visually with the more important mapped features.