Atlas Elyden

[Durakken]

I was unaware that there's a standard for the demarcations between city sizes.

There is no standard demarcation, especially not in modern day where everything is considered a city or town regardless of actual population and more based on feel of the place.
The numbers I gave are general mideval demographic average numbers. There is no known reason why the numbers are roughly 0.2k, 2k, 20k, and 200k either, but I could take a running guess.

The reason you don't really need to separate city from fortified city is because fortified city is the standard. Walls as much keep people out as they do in and most major population centers have them. On the other hand a Fort has qualities of a city, but because it's purpose is different you wouldn't classify that in the same way and nor would you mention population there because the population there is less static than at a city.

[vorropohaiah]

well the world is 'modern' (depending on country, many of which are in different technological and cultural stages, id place the date at 1850 - 1880 London) so most cities have outgrown (both physically and culturally) the need for walls. Though in other regions, they may be required. Some cities are still fortified behind full star-fortifications, and I felt the need to show this to be pertinent (again, more for myself when writing). The actual forts are pure military structures without civilian populations (ion fact there's no population marked alongside such places,

[Durakken]

I see. In the case of a more modern map I find that distinguishing at all is fairly pointless as it is more of a urbanized center that has a gradiant down to rural and then back up where another urban center is, because all the villages, towns, and cities have more or less merged. I personally would just identify major cities and capitals in the modern era and definitely leave out the population because it's fairly nonsensical the more you move to modern day with cities being merged together like they are, because you have people moving back and forth between them and inner major cities become just for business while the outter city and near-by cities are for living in. I don't know how bad it had gotten in that time period, but I would assume it was well into the process considering there are comments and debates about the subject at least in the Colonial era. And today that is certainly the case...

I personly have lived on or very near roads that when crossed you're in a different city but you've gone nowhere in terms of the modern world. (in fact i lived where i could literally be in any of 4 cities depending on which corner i was on of a cross roads).

So I would, like I said earlier in this post, more just have major cities and capitals listed... cuz it really doesn't make sense, at least to me, to list several cities that are essentially part of the same city as separate when they are neither important nor are they physically separated. But I don't look at atlases ever so I dunno ^.^ and if you're going for that type of thing I'd start with what an atlas lists and marks out first.

[vorropohaiah]

you're right about conurbations and blurred town borders (just for the sake of argument I come from a tiny country [Malta, population 400,000, where over half of our many towns are touching - cross the road and you move from one town to another. In some places a crossroad marks the boundary between 4 towns! So I know what you're talking about). Many of the icons on the map represent just that a population of 10,000, for instance, split between 5 towns and many other smaller villages in the immediate orbit. Of course this doesn't show in the map as you'd need to know more about the settlements themselves, and I doubt most people want to see such things here!

The closest icons on that map in terms of settlements are, I believe, 7-miles and that's a one-off, others are at least 10 miles distant, which I think is far enough to warrant a separate icon, especially if they're very different places.

[vorropohaiah]

So I'm looking for some feedback on this particular map. I tried out changing the orientation, so I have an example of portrait and landscape (do keep in mind this is intended for an atlas - so each of the below maps is A3, divided into 2 A4 'leaves' or pages). I'm leaning towards the landscape, which allowed me to improve the scale somewhat (increasing the map size to 108% of the original, IIRC) and it also gives me more room for inset maps depicting colonies and other parts of the nation that don't fit into the map, in proper atlas style. The downside of the Landscape orientation is I had to leave out the smaller nation of Hoamm, which will likely feature in a smaller 1-page map elsewhere in the atlas.

Please let me know which you prefer as I'd like some feedback, thanks!

[Durakken]

I prefer the verticaal because it shows all of it seamlessly...

On that same note, it bares mentioning that that if you plan to make a printed version then you should consider overlap on the pages, because something like a half ince to an inch gets bent into the seam and makes it hard to read/transfar back to a flat image like you have here (i've done that multiple times and it is a pain and takes hours of work to do). Considering that factor, while I prefer vertical, the reasons get removed as the overlap would cause those areas to be pushed off the page and need to be pictured like you did the landscape version.

[J.Edward]

In terms of just appearance, the vertical is more attractive.
In terms of use in an atlas, the horizontal is more applicable.
You do lose a sense of place with the horizontal as the lower portion of the peninsula is cut off.
This is the quandary that is always at play when doing layout, atlas layout in particular.
You could reduce the size to show more generally but then lose detail locally.

If it were me, I would probably opt for some combination of the vertical version with a number of insets and information spanning the 2 pages.
But that might lead to consistency issues across the whole atlas.
The amount of gutter that Durakken refers to may not be substantial depending on the number of pages and the binding method.
In some methods it wouldn't even be an issue [large pages that are center folded and then stapled or stitched at spine].

[Diamond]

Landscape orientation, most definitely.

[vorropohaiah]

thanks guys!

I have taken the gutter into account, which is why the short page edges have a wider space between the border and page edge - when it comes time to laying out the book ill add a 5mm gutter per page, moving the contents of each page closer to the page edge. It's one of my pet peeves that atlases don't have a much wider gutter than they do. None of the atlases I own allow the reader much option when looking at the contents near the gutter, which i always find baffling, given the whole point of an atlas!

[Pixie]

I don't know if it helps (probably doesn't) but have you considered a rotation of 45º to 60º for the map, on a landscape orientation?... you wouldn't have north at the top, but...