Since the best way to display spatial data is with a map, and since GIScience is all about spatial data, knowledge about cartography goes hand-in-hand with knowledge about GIS. There are many many sites concerned with cartography, so finding information on cartography is both easy and hard (which of those thousands of links is worth visiting?).
We can approach the subject (GIS–Cartography) from both an academic perspective and from a practical perspective. For more comprehensive coverage there are many excellent cartography texts in the libraries that you can review.
There are also sites that provide guidance on specific map-design elements such as colour choices and font selection, including:
- ColorBrewer – an online tool designed to help people select good color schemes for maps and other graphics, and it is worth reviewing before completing your labs and projects (think about the four different schemes being presented and what data characteristics would be associated with each).
- Color Scheme Types and Combinations: Overview – click on a colour patch to open up a page showing a map produced using that colour scheme.
- Google Fonts – offers hundreds of free fonts that you can use in desktop programs.
ESRI Mapping Center
ESRI uses a blog to to provide guidance on many issues such as mapping (e.g., 6 ways to improve your maps) as well as to make announcements of software improvements, etc. They have also published a number of podcasts that describe, in detail, many of the different features available in ArcGIS Pro as well as providing demonstrations on how to produce high-quality maps.