Isoyet Map

I wouldn't consider myself any sort of profession (just yet) but I think I've got layers down. I attempted to use a clipping mask for the border of the state, but it didn't work so I traced an outline of the state and used that to crop out the border.

I played with idea of a legend, but I liked the simplicity of using just the single sentence. I'm also usually challenged with color choices, so I thought that using grays would be easier. It was, I pulled up color brewer and it was straight forward.

Flow Map

Another of the more fun maps to make. It was enlightening to see that I could take raw data from a source (the Yearbook) and mold that data into a workable map that makes since. The legend is my least favorite. I attempted to make the triangular legend but I couldn't make it look right, so I kept this one.
I tried to acknowledge that there was an amount of "unknown" immigration. I hope that listing the data as not being there is truthful to the source and not misleading. In the same manner, I opted to remove Antarctica as there isn't a native human population of the continent (and therefore no immigration). I hope it's acceptable that I did both those things, I felt that while it may have been limiting in information to the end user, it was information that didn't benefit the purpose of the map.

The non contiguous map was a bit harder. I attempted to stylize the map a bit more by adding a drop shadow. Having never used AI before this course, it was pretty time consuming. I need to organize my layers more, as that was my biggest time sink. I had a constant struggle with the binding boxes, but every time I open AI, things are a bit easier. In order to get the shadow fill, I had to copy and paste a new layer of continents over the shadowed layer to make it look "lifted" off the map. I also discovered textures, and like them a bit more than solid colors for background.

Between the two maps, this one was more straight forward for me. I was able to get what I wanted and it showed up nice. The gradient for the legend was the hardest part, as I had to search the internet in order to find how to put the two colors on either end.

Here is my Florida Pop. density map. If anyone see's this and knows how to get rid of the white boarder, please help. I've struggled with this a lot in Illustrator. I've exported my jpegs at 300ppi, and made certain that my "paper" size and artwork size boarders are the same. It's really confusing me! Thanks if you can.