WIP stereographic world map

[vorropohaiah]

The labeling has some problems. If you are going to cram things in that tight, you need to do so VERY carefully. You should try to avoid colliding with other lines like the graticule and coastline, and especially with other labels. If you adjust the kerning manually, you can slip lines through gaps between the letters. If all else fails, you can put a gap in the other line to make the label easier to read. In a lot of cases it's quite hard to figure out what the labels are representing, and some are difficult to even read.
Adjusting overall letter spacing of a label is also something to consider, especially for labels representing areas. It would particularly help those all caps labels.

I was actually thinking of reducing the size of the nations (the caps labels), as well as adding partial masking the areas of the graticules with text over them, rather than changing the kerning of on the text, though i might do that. i know that coastal regions are typically depicted in the water at an angle, though given the coastline shape I wasnt able to, plus i'm not too bothered of precision - 16th-17th century world maps aren't known for the precision of their text:


many labels on that snip overlap the coastline and touch each other in places, though I do see what you mean now about the longitudinal graticules - none of them really cross them and the larger nation labels only just skim them.

Those white lines are very artificial looking. Think about the notional process behind this map being made. Personally, I like to do all the line work together, as a "drawing/printing" phase, and then add coloured highlights afterwards. That helps to avoid problems like this.

very true about the white lines, as I said, I'm not too happy about them at the moment, and theyre more placeholders for now than anything else. I might try the dashed/stroked coloured line common in the period, though not too sure ill go for it as most of it will be obscured by the text anyway. Though given my lack of experience in illustrator (which i rally want to start using) i'm still stumbling as to the best way to do this in PS - freehand pen tool/stroke/smooth is what comes to mind though any suggestions are welcome

thanks for the comments