Map of the Twin Kingdoms of Aran and Ilan - Handdrawn

[- Max -]

I'm a bit late on this but I have to disagree with Carbus abou thte fonts. Working as a graphic designer aswell, I think the way you differentiate things between the map labels and the text cartouche is obviously the color. For me that's all good and break monotony while keeping consistency. This said, since you used Chapbook on the cartouche, I would use it to label your cities and towns on the map aswell

I also agree with THW about the use of the ſ. you might want at least to work on typography details like mispellings or such to make it consistent (though I personnaly think that the ſ isn't really necessary since the map doesn't look that "old" right now)

Otherwise, nice job overall!

[Caenwyr]

The script looks really nice, do you have a whole language (i.e. including grammar and punctuation and stuff for the back story) or just a working script for place names? It really would look awesome, maybe you could try it on another map some time

Absolutely, I do have a language to accompany the script. It's still in development (and has been for the past few years) but I have a rudimentary grammar (a few dozens of pages) and a vocabulary almost 1500 words strong. I don't know any of it by heart though, so every sentence means a wild search through my grammar and vocabulary files, and probably a last minute stroke of creativity when I discover the word or expression I'm looking for isn't in the list yet. I might give the cartouche piece a go, however, it's not horribly long.

Yay, homebrew script! Seriously, it's looking really really good. Like Raptori, I'd love to see a version with all the text in that language, but… yeah The new font choices are great, fits the new parchment better imo. But now, the main font for the labels looks too modern in comparison. It's Monotype Corsiva, isn't it? Personally, I'd replace it with something that looks more handwritten and old.

Yeah, I might have to change it to the cartouche font. I hope I still have the text layers for the city labels somewhere, for some reason I rasterized them during one of my cleanup routines. Dumb!

I also agree with THW about the use of the ſ. you might want at least to work on typography details like mispellings or such to make it consistent (though I personnaly think that the ſ isn't really necessary since the map doesn't look that "old" right now)

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it yet. I like the idea of adding misspellings and such, but I'm afraid my knowledge of English isn't good enough to know which mistakes actually look historic and which ones look plain silly. So maybe it's safer to do away with the ſ altogether. You know what, I'll sleep on it . (In the morning I'll probably be lazy and go for a brutal "find and replace", but you just never know what strange things I might come up with during the night!)

[Caenwyr]

Hi all,

Here's my hopefully final update of the map. A few changes:

• changed the font of the city names to the one I used for the cartouche (Chapbook)
• added mountain names (forgot that in the last update... There's probably still tons of things I've forgotten, but you gotta stop somewhere!).

I decided not to go into the long s thingy, nor work on the Homebrew Script Version for the time being: time is precious!

and here it is then!

[- Max -]

I'd sugggest to expand the mountains labels on ranges with kerning.

[Lingon]

Great! That looks much better than the Corsiva I second -Max- about the mountain labels.

[Caenwyr]

Great! That looks much better than the Corsiva I second -Max- about the mountain labels.

Hi Max, Lingon! Thanks for your kerning suggestion. I must admit I already tried that, and found out I'm not particularly fond of the effect. I feel with kerning the words are a bit too stretched, rendering them less than readable. Especially on the longer mountain ranges. Admittedly, I got away with it in the seas, since there's no other lines and colors beneath the text, but over the mountains I personally feel the kerning renders the text less clear, and less aesthetically pleasing as well. You'll find an example below. I personally think the non-kerned version looks better, but I'm open for other opinions. Maybe I shouldn't try and stretch the labels over the entire range, but limit it to a certain maximum interspacing. What do you guys think?


non-kerned



kerned

[Lingon]

You have a point, it is less legible. Personally, I think it's so much more aesthetically pleasing that it makes up for the loss of readability, but it's just a matter of personal preference

[- Max -]

I'd vote for the kerned one of course.

[Wingshaw]

I'm with Max and Lingon on this. It does look better, despite a slight decrease in legibility. THW

[Raptori]

Definitely kerned for me. I'd probably prefer one with consistent kerning on all of them, rather than stretched to fit the entire range in each case. Looks good now regardless