Planning out your map

The most important thing when putting together a map is to plan it out with a compilation sketch, whether it's digital, or old-school paper and pencil. Too often, we rush through to meet a deadline and end up with a poorly planned map that doesn't get its message across clearly. Even though it is much simpler in ArcPro to add, move, and reuse maps and layouts, planning is still essential.

At a minimum, toss some placeholder rectangles in your layout view as you work. This is especially important if you know you will have a sizeable legend, inset, or locator maps, or if you need to add charts or notes to the map. If you don't plan for them early, you may wind up wasting precious time moving and resizing things to make it all fit, and run out of either time or patience to focus on those three themes of balance, harmony, and unity that will make your map shine. When everything is in place, lean back and give it the squint test—close your eyes halfway, and see if something jumps out that shouldn't, or vice versa.

One last thing, sometimes you can leave out certain map elements. Certainly, if you're working with small multiples, you make all the maps at the same scale, so you only need one set of scale and directional indicators. If you've used a graticule, you don't need a north arrow. If everything on your map is labeled, you don't need a legend. Is the map going in a report, or professional publication? You might be able to put the title in the caption and free up some space, although if it's likely the map will be shared independently of the report, you may want to leave it in. Don't just automatically stuff everything in there; make sure it makes sense.