A "Dark" Africa

Source: http://www.africaguide.com/afmap.htm

Here is an African map from Africaguide.com. It is an attractive map because it's black, which is not common. But this map really is a good map? Or it just want to be attractive and not map reader-friendly?

Map of countries or continents with black background or ocean is not common and I want to note the cartographer's creativeness for this map, but black color for the ocean? I didn't think it's a good idea because firstly, I think, water bodies should always be in blue because it has already registered in the most people's minds that water bodies are always represented with the blue color. What if the map reader didn't know the location of Africa? He could have been fooled by this map. Fortunately, the labels have saved the cartographer for his inappropriate creativeness. The names of the oceans, seas and others have helped the map reader what this entire black is. Colors of countries are consistent. All of them are in dark color.

On the other hand, this map has a little trouble with place labels. Some texts coincides with the countries' border lines making them unreadable. For instance, Burundi it looks like "Barundi", while Lesotho looks like "Uesotho." For maps, if points or areas are too small to put the complete name of the place inside, it would be better to just write the labels outside of the whole area or continent and just draw a straight line from the label to the point it pertains to.

Data are just appropriate if this map is just intended for the location and relative sizes of the countries. Nevertheless, it could not be used for other purposes.

Overall, this map lacks of elements such as map title, legend, scale, direction, sources, and map inset which serves as a guide to locate Africa in a world map. How could this map be a guide for Africa if it lacks too many and important elements? It is just an attractive map indeed. Rating: 6.

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