This tutorial will examine a hypothetical scenario in which we will
build up a complex presentation complete with annimations to clearly
present a complex map in stages. We will use many of the editing
techniques that we have discussed so far.
Our starting point is a readership penetration map overlaid on a drivetime area. This map has a lot of information present and so can be difficult to digest in one go. With the aid of animations we can present this information to an audience in smaller steps. First however we will tidy up some positioning and styling issues with the map as it stands. The Readership Penetration keyWe will start by making the readership penetration key narrower, so that it does not obscure content on the map. First we need to ungroup the key. The steps are summarised below.
Now we need to make the background white area, of the thematic key narrower
 Styling the Drivetime CatchmentWe aim to start our presentation with a simple map illustrating our drivetime, and for context we would like this to always be visible - right up until the end of the animation. For this reason we must change the style of the drivetime catchment and arrange it in front of the readership penetration tiles. We start by Ungrouping the map and the catchment key.
 Now we are going to change the style of the catchment, so we need to add it's key box into the selection.
 We want to add a similar distinctive style to the newspaper circulation area. Although we cannot see it now it will form part of our annimation as we build up the complexity of the slide in stages.
Tidy the TextNow that we are happy with the style we have used for our catchments, we decide to tidy up the text on the map - starting with the placenames. We will start at the top, with the Cities. Ungrouping these enables
us to change/move Kingston Upon Hull which starts as a very long label.
We will select, just Kingston Upon Hull using the Selection Pane. Then in Drawing → Format Shape -> Text box we change the behavior of the
textbox to resize to fit the text, before adding a carriage return to
the label, to make it a shorter fatter label. Remeber to deselect the wrap text in box option to get the name to update.  Next we Ungroup large towns, before selecting just Darlington and deleting it. Whilst we are dealing with the Large Towns, we take the opportunity to move Dewsbury and Wakefield apart, so that they do no overlap. We can select Dewsbury (in Select Multiple Objects) and nudge it up a little using the keyboard cursor keys, and then repeat with Wakefield, only this time nudging it down a little - so both places are still close to their geographic location. At the medium town level, we again Ungroup and delete Hessle. As this is a fairly complex map, and already quite busy, we decide that this is enough placenames, and so we delete all of the Small towns, Villages and suburbs. In this case, where we don't want a whole level, there is no need to ungroup first. Next we will try and tidy up the text of the sector labels - especially around the middle of York, as this is really the focal point of our map. Even zoomed in, it is impossible to read the jumbled mess of text caused by the mass of placenames near the centre of York. If we used extremely small text, we could perhaps stop so much of the overlap, but is unlikely that anyone would be interested enough to read this small text anyway. Instead we will delete these pieces of text too, as they are adding little to the map. When we Ungroup the Tile Labels group, you will see that there are now hundreds of objects in the select multiple object list. This is the complexity that using groups, shields us from, but even with so many objects it is still possible to make an educated guess at what many of them are. We start by using the Selection Pane dialogue to select all of the tile labels that belong to tiles in YO1,YO10,YO24 and YO31 as we know that these are all close to York city center. Having deleted these the map becomes a little clearer, and so we might be able to pick out other candidates for deletion.  You can also reduce the font size for the tile labels if you find this makes picking them out easier - you can always change them back again once you have done your editing. It is also possible to pick out individual labels with the mouse. Using a combination of these techniques we are able to clear out the labels that overlap - especially in the important central study area of our map. Zooming back out reveals how much cleaner our map looks for this treatment.  Now that we are reasonably happy with our map, we can begin to think
about how to present it to an audience a step at a time, to make it as
clear as possible. AnimationIt helps to plan all of the stages in advance, as this will help us decide how to organise groups in the presentation to make their animation easy. To this end we envisage a slide that begins with a simple map showing the overall region including placenames and roads. As we present our slide we explain that we did a 20 minute drivetime and introduce that drivetime catchment to the slide. We then go on to explain why it is that we picked whatever media types and titles we did, in this case The Press - York. As we do this we can introduce the circulation area of The Press. Now looking at this map there is some significant difference in the areas covered by our drivetime and the circulation area, so we go on to explain that it is possible to drill down into more detail by examining actual readership of the title in question. If we concentrate on the 'hot' bands of readership, it is clear that the readership of The Press is not so different from our 20 minute drivetime. In this way we have introduced the audience to a complex readership penetration map in stages that are easy for you to present in small steps and easier for them to digest and understand. Our plan is thus:
From the steps above we still have many levels of placenames ungrouped, and the tile labels ungrouped, which makes the Selection Pane dialogue very busy. As none of the text layers is involved in part animations (that is all the text of a type is added at once) we can regroup these levels.
If you find it easier, you can repeat this regrouping for the placenames.
Now our first animation is made up from the drivetime catchment, and
all of the catchment key apart from The Press - Yorkbox and The Press -
Yorkkeytext. So using the Selection Pane dialogue we will choose
those elements.
Next comes the newspaper circulation area and it's key entry. So we go back to Select Multiple Objects and change our selection to these items.
Our final selection is the biggest. In Select Multiple Objects we select:
Again we select Add Effect entrance, in the Custom Animation Pane, but this time we are going to choose the More Effects option As this is a big block of solid colour arriving all at once, we are looking for something a bit more subtle. Browsing the options in the Add Entrance Effect options we settle on Fade Now we can choose Play in the Custom Animation pane, or indeed view our slide in a full screen presentation to see the results of our work.
With just a few minutes of work we have added greatly to the impact
this map will have in a presentation and presented a complex slide in
small easy to digest steps. With a bit of experimenting, animation can
be utilized for all sorts of advantages. Have a go yourself, and if you
get stuck or just need a guiding hand, please give us a call. |
JICREG mapping - PowerPoint 2007 Tutorial |