In the last few weeks, I have really dug into the nitty gritty dregs of what it means to make a map. For example, I didn’t anticipate having to take almost three hours to simply add more data into it. On the map itself, I have two different layers on Roman North Africa. One that shows the borders that were drawn in the year 117 CE, and another set which were drawn in the year 303 CE. I only added these layers with boundaries only after I had set all my city points and hadn’t added the provinces on it. So, I was looking at a map with boundaries and cities, but on the label when you clicked a point you there wasn’t a label for the province in either of those years. I could have just gone back into the spreadsheet and replotted the points with the provinces labeled, however, I can’t see where each point is in the spreadsheet. So, as a result I had to click each individual point on the map-all 112- and manually enter the province for both sets of boundaries. I ran into ANOTHER problem after that, where while some of the points from my sources did have a province, they weren’t inside the correct border. This meant that I needed to cross reference and double check that I had the correct provinces in the databases I used to get the points in the first place. This is the kind of snag that I have come to realize is commonplace, and like today, can at times take me an entire day of working to get through. However, it was satisfying in the end now that I’ve finally completed it.
The idea of being a designer never crossed my mind for a moment, and I never considered myself someone artistically inclined. However, I’ve come to realize as well in the last few weeks, simple things like color design and the overall feel and look of making a map like this is making me think about design for the first time. Of course, I can’t just add points onto a map and call it a day, I have to fiddle with colors and fonts to labels along with the map itself, and that has really expanded my skillset as the weeks have gone on. That of course combined with me just becoming more and more proficient in using different kinds of software and web apps is going to be really useful going forward.
In addition to all of the valuable skills that have come in the previous few weeks, being compensated for my time has really been one of the most rewarding things. I don’t count myself as a superficial person, but getting money in return for all my time and hardwork has made me even more motivated to do a great job. It really is nice getting a feel for how a future career can go for me. Now, at around the halfway point of the semester, I’ll soon finally get to move onto the next steps of the project, and finally be finished with this map.
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