Real-world map: US Nat'l Park Style

[waldronate]

First question is always: what is the intended purpose of this map? I observe that the federal land boundaries aren't masked by the in basin/out of basin gray boundary, suggesting that those boundaries are of greater importance than the basin boundary.
The basin boundary edge feels a little diffuse; perhaps a hard line (green?) along that boundary would let you delineate it more clearly?
Does.the masked area change the hue and saturation? You can probably get the basin area to pop more without losing information by dropping the saturation for the outside.

[nmsheldon]

Thanks for all your notes. I'll definitely address the problems you've both suggested and post an update here in case you're curious.

Some items like some of the borders to reserves and some rivers seem exceptionally blocky to me. It could be that the data you have sourced it from lacks precision. Not sure if that's correct or could be fixed up a bit and if so I am not sure how you can do that but usually somebody on here knows QGis better.

This is partially a data problem, and I think partially a rendering problem from QGIS. I discovered these issues along the way, and for future maps I'm going to have to use other sources that I already knew about and should have used.

First question is always: what is the intended purpose of this map?

The main purpose of this map was simply practice. I've also discovered in the process of making this map that having a real purpose for the map is more important than I thought it would be. My future practice maps must be more specific.

[waldronate]

The main purpose of this map was simply practice. I've also discovered in the process of making this map that having a real purpose for the map is more important than I thought it would be. My future practice maps must be more specific.

I like to think of a map as "An abstraction of a place fixed in a specific medium for a specific client's specific purpose." The hardest part of the art of cartography (OK, art in general) is the abstraction. You need to figure out which things to put on the map and which things to leave out, which goes back directly to what you're supposed to be showing. If your map is "The Lake Winnebago Basin", then that's a somewhat different set of things to show than "Federal Lands in the Lake Winnebago Basin", "Interstate Accessibility in the Lake Winnebago Basin", or "Farming Communities of the Lake Winnebago Basin" would be. It's the same underlying data set, but you get to decide which parts are more important for the client's needs.

The best part of a practice map is that you can start from the base set of stuff that you have here and then iterate on showing different kinds of things with the same data. Semi-mechanical translations of DEMs and land cover maps will end up looking very different than a more artistic slant on the same data that might end up. For example, a "Natural Attractions" map might shows the interesting natural features of the area as small insets. Little insets of the kinds and abundance of fish might work for a "fishing guide" (along with the Evil Towers of the Fish and Game service). The purpose of the map will guide you on what needs to go in there!

Tom Patterson has a lovely site at https://www.shadedrelief.com/ that shows a lot of kinds of maps that he did for the USGS.

[nmsheldon]

I thought I replied here, apparently not. I wanted to thank both of you for the feedback, after making the suggested fixes it does look much better. I've decided to save the disk space on the server for the real maps, and not post my update. But I will use these thoughts in future maps.