Critique on Map of Nunavut

This map shows Nunavut, a territory of Canada that separated from the Northwest Territories in the 1990s, as a result of an agreement made between the Canadian government and the indigenous peoples who make the majority of the territory. I cannot immediately tell the projection of the map on sight, and there is nowhere that I can find it listed. There are other maps on the site that do have more detailed descriptions about their maps though, such as listed projections. The map’s main focus is to show where various towns in Nunavut are located, anyway. (And “towns” is most definitely the most accurate description of these places, considering the entirety of Nunavut has a population of just over thirty thousand, with the capital, Iqaluit, having the largest population of the towns, at just over six thousand.)

As for how the towns are labeled, they seem labeled in a way generally consistent with good map creating convention. Most towns are listed with the name listed directly above the dot representing the town, which is almost as good as having the label up and to the right. Then, labels are shifted around, according to space constraints. Although I understand that the map creator probably wanted to send the message that the area was cold, I dislike how the color of Nunavut was in a bluish shade, considering how much of the area is bordered by water, which was also colored blue. I think a very dark color, such as red, dark green, or something along those lines would have been considerably better to see things.

(Source: http://athropolis.com/map-nunavut.htm)

Chloropleth and Graduated Symbol Maps

2000 – 2007 map
1990 – 2000 map

I chose the breaks that I did for both maps, so people would get an easily retained idea of how much the population changed. For example, in the 1990 – 2000 map, there was a county that gained approximately 66% in population. Considering there was only one county in the whole state that rose that much, I decided to simply say it increased by over 50%, so people could quickly understand just how much it increased, as opposed to just “a lot.”

I chose the colors I did on the chloropleth map, because I wanted cool colors to represent counties that were either losing population or remaining stagnant, while hot colors showed which counties were gaining population. Cool colors show desolation while hot colors show the opposite.

I chose high variance of sizes on the black dots against the light gray background in the graduated symbol map, because they would be easy to see and be immediately understood.