First attempt FT + Photoshop

[feanaaro]

The Decadence fonts over at dafont.com might be worth looking at. They're imitations of old printing press fonts. Very legible, but also very non-modern.

The font is nice but looks 'antique' like in Gutenberg, while I am aiming more at antique like Stonehenge. So, a pre-roman alphabet being incomprehensible, perhaps a more neutral font would be better

[njordys]

I have nothing to offer but my uconditional praise. Woah

[Midgardsormr]

Maybe something with a Celtic flair, like Belwe or Sherwood?

[feanaaro]

Thanks, nice fonts those.

[feanaaro]

Here there is the last version, with the Belwe font. I used a light grey with black stroke and a little shadow. It seems that here the prevalent opinion is in favour of dark text+light outline or glow, but I really dislike that style. I ended up adding the text in Illustrator because working with text in PS maddens me, probably I miss some very obvious function.
I changed the forest again, playing with shadows, bevels, etc and using a different brush (because I realised how to make it!). Moreover, the saturation of everything except cities and fields has been slightly reduced (15%), for less garish colours. The frame is a simple and dumb texture that I stole somewhere (perhaps here, perhaps somewhere else, don't remember), but I like the effect.

Let me know, I would call this complete, more or less. Perhaps with some legend added – by the way, grey lines are roads, red squares are cities, red circles towns, red triangles fortress or keeps (the usual three little circles would be ruins, but none is shown). As for the scale, the area represented would be roughly 1300*1625km according to FT; perhaps I will slightly reduce the size of my world and everything in proportion.

[arsheesh]

Very nice. I like this font the best. The forests look quite nice as well.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Midgardsormr]

Lovely type! The only thing I think you should look at is the direction of the light on your icons v the text. I'm in a wonky browser that doesn't let me view at full size, but it looks to me, from the itty-bitty image I can see, that the shadows are being cast in two different directions.

Good choice on reducing the saturation, too. I like this style very much!

[feanaaro]

Lovely type! The only thing I think you should look at is the direction of the light on your icons v the text. I'm in a wonky browser that doesn't let me view at full size, but it looks to me, from the itty-bitty image I can see, that the shadows are being cast in two different directions.

That is very true, I did not notice it. It is due to using Illustrator for the text; apparently they have the opposite default values for shadows. Should I correct it and re-upload the map in the same place?