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This map of the Falkland Islands incorporates several elements of map layout: a title, a scale bar, a legend, and an inset map. This is a compromise between the fluid and compartmentalized approaches to layout order, with the non-map elements sitting "on top" of the main map.
The legend of the map also contains important information and all of the thematic symbols of the map. Symbols that need no explanations, or do not coincide with the theme of the map, are normally omitted from the map legend. Thematic symbols directly represent the maps theme and should stand out. [17]
Maps of the world or large areas are often either 'political' or 'physical'. The most important purpose of the political map is to show territorial borders; the purpose of the physical map is to show features of geography such as mountains, soil type, or land use including infrastructures such as roads, railroads, and buildings.
The primary purpose of the legend for a proportional circle map, as with any thematic map, is for the map reader to clearly understand the meaning of the features and variable being represented, and to assist in the interpretation of the particular values represented by each symbol.
A title tells the reader what the map is about, including the purpose or theme, and perhaps the region covered. A legend or key explains the meaning of the symbols on the map; A neatline may frames the entire map image, although many maps use negative space to set the map apart; A compass rose or north arrow provides orientation
A map has a purpose and an audience. Its purpose may be as broad as teaching the major physical and political features of the entire world, or as narrow as convincing a neighbor to move a fence. The audience may be as broad as the general public or as narrow as a single person.
The other option is to store the location and style of each label in the map data, just like the rest of the map; this is typically called annotation. [21] Text can be modeled as a Geometric primitive , like points, lines, and polygons, and in graphics software , it is stored in the map document in the same way as other geometry, allowing for ...
The most common purpose of a thematic map is to portray the geographic distribution of one or more phenomena. Sometimes this distribution is already familiar to the cartographer, who wants to communicate it to an audience, while at other times the map is created to discover previously unknown patterns (as a form of Geovisualization). [17]