How do you choose what sort of "key" or legend to use on your map? (If any!)

[Jalyha]

Hmmm ... I can see what you mean, but I'm not sure if that's quite what I meant...


You can have several of a certain style of map... and they all have the *information* printed in different ways.


I'm sort of stuck... I have a map, I've drawn/painted/edited nearly everything... and now I'm worried about labeling it.


I have several fonts that will suit the map.... I just don't know where to put the information. How do you know if a map will be better with labels in one place or another? Does it even matter? Don't you worry about obscuring the picture if you label on the map?

What about realistic-ish maps... how does *any* label fit that style?

I'm just... utterly confused..

[- Max -]

Hmmm ... I can see what you mean, but I'm not sure if that's quite what I meant...


You can have several of a certain style of map... and they all have the *information* printed in different ways.


I'm sort of stuck... I have a map, I've drawn/painted/edited nearly everything... and now I'm worried about labeling it.


I have several fonts that will suit the map.... I just don't know where to put the information. How do you know if a map will be better with labels in one place or another? Does it even matter? Don't you worry about obscuring the picture if you label on the map?

What about realistic-ish maps... how does *any* label fit that style?

I'm just... utterly confused..

A few advices that might help you hopefully (whatever the style of map you're going for):

- You might think about what's the purpose of your map and what it's intended for. This will help you to know what labels are useful or not.
- You need to label a mountains range? Don't care too much if the label "obscuring" the mountains, you might want to try playing with the colors and the contrasts to make the labels pop up without ruining your drawing effort.
- Try to stretch the labels all along the shapes for geographical features and lands using font kerning , use curved paths that makes sense with the shapes to label those elements.
- Prefer straight labels for locations like city, town and such, for the sake of legibility (unless you don't have room to put them properly liek this on the map).
- Use some outlining or outer glow (playing with the adjustments) to make your labels readable if it's needed.
- Think legibility first (that means use some clear and solid font and make sure you can easily read your informations on the map).

As for the other stuff, I would follow some obvious rules: If you feel the map informations aren't obvious ( complicated icons, high number of icons, specific locations), add a key to explain them. If you need to add some additional informations that can't be depicted on your map, you might want to add some informations box, some bars or cartouches to detail it.