Wine Consumption in Europe

This week's lab assignment had us looking at population density per square kilometer and liters per capita wine consumption in Europe.  The purpose of the exercise was to have us gain experience in choropleth mapping and symbolization as well as graduated and proportional symbols usage.  This exercise also allowed us to become more familiar with classification and color schemes. 

For my map, I chose a continuous color scheme for population density along with a natural breaks classification scheme.  For the wine consumption, I selected a graduated symbol theme and used a manual interval classification scheme base most closely off the natural breaks method with 5 classes. I did this so I could break the data into groups that both included general outliers, but still identified trends.  I used grapes inside graduated circles to indicate the relative rate of consumption and I chose a deep purple combined with very light purple to contrast and provide nice compliment to the black and white choropleth map.  I completed all major mapping tasks in ArcGIS Pro and then transferred the document to Adobe Illustrator to create and position all country labels. 

I am still getting used to Adobe Illustrator and still find it clunky to use, but I definitely see the value in pairing ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator to make the best maps.  The two programs have complimentary tools which, if used properly, can really help the map-maker.