October/November 2012 Lite Challenge: Spool-O-Mapic - Keribai River Hwy

[amberroberts09]

Here's the wristwatch version I was thinking about:

Roadbooks, Part 4: The Wrist-Mounted Original - Core77

very nice !!!

[Schwarzkreuz]

COOL!!! Thats just insanely cool.

[jbgibson]

I like the idea of an advert for the spool maps, but in any case there'll be a strip of spool map illustrated. I started working one out by hand, but this PhotoPlus digital version is going faster.

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[jtougas]

That is awesome !!

[jbgibson]

OK, for a bare Jindek's Patent Spool-o-Mapic highway strip map (they do publish river and trail maps too, by the way) this'll do as a sample. Thanks for letting the contest continue to the weekend - weekends are sometimes all I have for mapping.

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The annotations would have a key on the end of the spool; info like this is noted:

BC GC PC -- Best/good/poor chai (tea being very important in Sam'thuma)
BF GF PF -- Best/good/poor food
BS GS PS -- Best/good/poor service (mechanical service for vehicles)
PT AL -- Petrol or Alcohol station
W/R/F <number>KHz -- Weather/road/ford conditions on radio at what frequency
TB -- Toll bridge
TC FC L -- Toll or free camping, lodging available
AV -- Snake and spider antivenin depot (usually with a rudimentary medical clinic) (This is a jungle area. Motorcycle riders more often wear snake-shield hats than helmets - picture 2-ft-plus wide conical coolie headgear.)

Advertisements in the margin both subsidise the maps (which are available for the equivalent of the cost of a good meal) and indicate where the product is served. Chai shops in particular have many brands and wide varieties of leaves available, and many travelers have finicky palates for such. Some would choose a poor cuppa ChiaChai over a good cuppa BlueChai (ScoChai, "blue" in Jopec being transliterated scodhit). Note this is an international edition of a strip map, in the widespread Auroran language represented by English. The local language Jopec you'll see in a few places even here, like on the PerfectChai and ScoChai logos.

Mileposts (KmPosts, actually) are red dots, and red numbers. Note there's a bit of a rubber scale in use, expanding the areas of particular interest or that need additional detail. The cased roadways are full two-lane roads, paved. The dashed ones are Sam'thuman-standard highway width, a minimum of a meter and a third. Motorcycles, 'mechanical mules", and bikes are more widespread than trucks and foreign-standard cars in Sam'thuma, but this is a modern, cross-principality highway. Era is equivalent to Earth's 1940-1950 in technology btw.

While this is a useful amount of info, there's a widespread cottage industry of further annotating these strip maps. Names of roadside establishments, prices, telephone numbers (where phones are available), and distances off-map to adjoining communities might be handwritten in place, with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the vintage and reputation of the annotator.

If need be that's good enough to call finished.

[jtougas]

That is great !!

[Larb]

This looks really nice, very clean and professional. I like the way you have tied the advertising into it too. I think the flexible scale using the milestones works too. The map certainly seems usable and informative anyway.

[jbgibson]

Thanks! Here's a crack at what I kept picturing - the maps advertised in a magazine - a way to do a 'key' without showing a boring section of the strip-map.

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[jbgibson]

... and a last version to round out the magazine page.

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The July magazine covor photo isn't mine - it's from flickr user kerolic by way of a Creative Commons attribution license. Thanks!

[Lyandra]

Now it looks simply awesome!