July / Aug 15 Lite Challenge: The Peninsula

[ChickPea]

Thanks, Snodsy! This is great feedback.

To answer a few of your points...

maybe more branching off the main rivers.

I actually had more branching of rivers earlier on and ended up taking some out, because it felt like too much. However I hadn't done the mountains at that point, so I could probably look at adding in a few small tributaries again.

Maybe take the Black dots down to a lighter grey OR maybe instead of a larger dot do a small dot with an outer ring stroke. The larger dot could be a little smaller and still read different than the small dots. Maybe same size - grey and black?

Could the roads have more spacing between dots or again grey.

Yeah, I can certainly take a look at this. I only did the roads last night and hadn't tried any other colour/style but black dots. I can easily change it, or space the dots out more.

The regional divisional lines aren't apparent - Make those grey?

You don't think they're clear? I had tried to make them stand out with a double stroke effect (I have a grey stroke underneath, then a dotted/dashed black stroke on top.) My problem with making them grey is that many of the regional borders run alongside the rivers, which are also grey. I thought it might cause confusion to have two grey lines near each other, though I suppose if one were dotted that would differentiate. It's trying to find the right balance between grey rivers, grey roads and grey borders. (I'm sick of grey!)

Wish all the mountains had the same line weight, the large ones are thicker.

Yeah, that's something I'm going to take a look at and fix the worst offenders. I'm using tiled clones in Inkscape. You can scale them, but you can't adjust the shape (while they're connected to the original, anyway) and obviously as you make them bigger, the lines get thicker. When I've finished everything else, I'm going to unlink the ones that stand out the most and manually fix them.

Shouldn't PORT LODAIR be all small caps like other major cities? Are you going to label the seas?

Oops, that's a booboo on my part. Port Lodair should have a small dot like the other smaller settlements. Well spotted! I'll get that fixed. Hadn't thought about labelling the seas, but that's a good idea. I'll come up with something for that.

The hills seem a little random and evenly spaced to a degree, especially at the bottom.

Yup, guilty as charged! I got a bit click-happy and was pasting them all over the place. I actually took some out before I uploaded the latest WIP. You should have seen it before!!

I feel that the hills are probably OK on the Plains area, as I wanted to give the impression of rolling countryside (a sorta LOTR Rohan feel) with few settlements and a nomadic population who travelled with their animal herds. But the region to the south could probably have most of the hills removed, or consolidated somewhat.

I was just reading an article on Eduard Imhof on type treatment, he suggests type above the river lines, since there are less descenders than ascenders, they sit better. (although your R's have that strong descending leg it may not be best)

I had two issues with labelling the rivers. Firstly, some of the rivers are very bendy and it wasn't always easy to have the type flowing round the curves, so I tried to pick the best place based on where the 'loosest' curve was. The other issue is that some of the regional borders are right next to the river. So I didn't want to have a label, then a border below it, then the river underneath that. I thought that might be confusing and therefore a label directly under the river would be better.

Is there any best practice on where exactly on the river is the best place to label it? What I mean is, is it customary to place the label near the mouth of the river, or halfway along or what? Or doesn't it matter so long as it's on the main trunk of the water?

Overall I think your type treatment has really nice divisions

Thank you. I used the IM Fell type family, which I adore because it has a beautiful italic, and also because it has a small caps font. I love spaced out small caps. So classy!

Just some thought,

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions, and you've given me a few things to work on. Thank you!

[ChickPea]

I've made a few minor tweaks since my last update, thanks to some pointers from Snodsy. I've made the roads a much lighter grey and changed them to smaller, more spaced out dots, and I feel much happier with them now. They aren't so 'in your face' now but they're still quite visible. Also worked on the mountains to make the lines on the larger ones thinner.

I've tried a much lighter background and I kinda like it, but I'm not sure. I probably need to give it a day or two to decide. What does everyone else think? Is the lighter background better? I have the land set to a very pale grey colour and it might be better as pure white if I go for the lighter sea background. Or maybe I should make the sea white. Aargh!!

Still to do: forests, a few more labels to be added, possibly some minor tweaks to the rivers and finally the legend.

###Latest WIP###

[Diamond]

Hmmm. I like the dark background better because of the contrast, but the coastlines show up better with the light background. It's probably just personal preference but I always like to see the coastlines well-defined.

[snodsy]

I agree with Diamond, I like the darker backer, it looks a little washed out. I think the large City dots could be even a little smaller and still read as bigger. Like the other changes looks really nice.

[ChickPea]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Much appreciated. I see what you're both saying about the washed out background but .... since I can't resist beating a dead horse ... I'm giving it one more try, this time with a pure white background, instead of a pale grey. I've increased the opacity on the broken lines around the coast to provide a bit of contrast. I've also added forests and made a few other small updates.

So, the white one or the grey one??? I do have a hankering for the white one!

[Diamond]

The hypothetical publisher would probably love the white one (less ink, less cost ), but I still like the gray one - better contrast.

[Bogie]

What Diamond said!

[ChickPea]

Thanks guys, I guess grey it is!

I'm more or less done, though I'll cast a fresh eye over it again during the week in case there are any minor errors, but for the sake of the scraper, I'm attaching the grey image again with the WIP tag as hopefully this will be the final version.

I'm off to something bright and colourful. Sick of looking at greyscale!

### Latest WIP ###

[Chashio]

That's a fine map, ChickPea. I really like your overall use of the lines, values, and patterns, etc, to bring the style together. I do have one question, though, as I'm not quite sure: are the duchies part of the kingdom (I assume from the map title) or is it just the island that is the kingdom (which seems possible after reading the Isle label)?

[Meshon]

I like the clarity of this map. You've done a great job of combining the human elements (roads, settlements) with the natural world.

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