For my Technology for Professional Writer’s Class (ENG 321) during Fall 2017, we were required to complete several projects to gain understanding and proficiency with Adobe products. One of these projects was working together in a group to create a map in InDesign that featured a geographical area with two, definable sets of data on the map.
Project Responsibilities and Plan
Our first problem was to find what we wanted to focus on for our map. After talking together as a group, we agreed to research different areas of the world we could use and what two data points we could use to show information. After sharing our ideas with each other, we decided to use an idea of showing piracy in Nassau, a small island in the Caribbean where the famous pirate Blackbeard had his fortress and other famous pirates frequented during the late 1600’s and early 1700’s. One of our classmates had lived in Nassau and wanted to use the areas she had visited as an inspiration for the map.
For data points, we decided to use famous pirate locations and then show popular trade routes in the area that would attract pirates to the area. However, it was difficult to find accurate maps from that time period to show where the actual pirates and we needed to zoom out to accurately show trade routes rather than focus solely on Nassau, so we had to revise our plans to include slightly different data sets that were easier to find.
Instead of just focusing on Nassau, we expanded our map to the entire Caribbean area in the 1600-1700’s and show three popular pirating areas: Port Royal, Tortuga and New Providence. Each one had a short description about why they were popular pirating areas and why they stopped being popular pirating areas. Along with these three areas, we included important events that happened at the three locations and the dates it occurred. For example, a devastating earthquake, fire, and hurricane occurred in Port Royal that helped destroy the pirate haven in the 1700’s.
One of our group members had experience with InDesign and offered to design the project if I and another group member got reference pictures for the infographic, and found data sets that we could use for the map. Once an initial design was drafted, we met together and discussed what needed to be done to make it understandable and informative.
In the final formatting preparation, we decided to present the map in a poster and web infographic, with information on certain locations that visitors might want to know about. Our “client” was a history museum that wanted to inform visitors of what happened in the Golden Age of Piracy, and our designer created the InDesign file to be 18 inches by 11 inches wide, big enough to be a poster and high resolution enough to be an infographic.