Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

Horizontal Legend for hypsometrically tinted shaded relief

April 02 2008 | 1 comment
Categories: ArcGIS Methods, Map Elements

On Charlie Frye's blog entry on creating a hypsometrically tinted shaded relief legend, he gave an example on how to make a vertical legend. I was wondering if there were any tips on labeling a horizontal legend. I had made a vertical legend along with labels, and thought that a horizontal one might be better for the map layout given the main map data frame's zize. So i just rotated the data frame (using data frame tools) for the legend to make it horizontal but am looking for advice on how to effectively label it.

Mapping Center Answer:

I like using the rotated labels, I don't quite rototate all the way to 45 degrees, so the text is still more horizontal than vertical. See the attachment as an example

Attachment: Example of horizontal legend labels

Alternatives to labeling posted by Aileen Buckley on Apr 2 2008 4:13PM

We recently presented some information on terrain representation legends in a workshop we did – there are two PowerPoint files (PPTs) you can download with some examples that are horizontally aligned but do not use angled text. They are located on the Mapping Center Other Resources page in the abstract for the Terrain Representation Workshop. Take a look at the "Hillshading and Layer Tinting" and "Terrain Representation Legends" presentations to see these examples.

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