Editing Map Series - Part 2, Coloring Maps

Coloring Your Maps

There are lots of reasons to color your map.  You may be creating a choropleth map for an infographic that uses color to represent information that pertains to certain map areas. You might simply have aesthetic reasons for adapting a map to suit an overall design.

 

Simple choropleth map from Datawrapper shows the basic technique of showing one variable with color shading and dropped out boundaries.

 

 

 

Regardless of your reasons for colorizing, you have a tremendous control over the colors of your map. Map Resources maps are carefully constructed to take advantage of the power of Ilustrator's color editing capabilities.

 

 

On every map, areas (ie, countries, states and counties) are separate objects.  This means you can select any object and fill with color.  You can further tweak the appearance by adjusting the colors on the lines and text.

 

Take a look at this video to see how to color the map the way you want it.

 

Want to try editing a map? Download free map samples here.

Come back next week for Part 3 and learn about Editing Map Text.