Quick question- map element basic research

[Runninghead]

Hi,

Just a quick question, hopefully:

So much "map furniture" on old maps but you can't research it if you don't even know what it's called.
I've boned up on windroses and added some in to my first proper map now (though it's nowhere near finished).
It's inspired me to add more "map furniture" so... any recommendations/info on these major elements, suitable for a newb?

I'm particularly interested at the moment in those scale frames- kind of chequered, that you see on some old maps, but any response welcome.

btw: I'm playing with procedurals and found a neat way to generate circles (in Photoshop) where lines on the windroses cross:



Select the windrose line layer (mine are pale blue lines on black, set to screen).
Copy it in to an Alpha Channel, make a selection of the Alpha channel.
Go Refine Edge and blur the selection so only the points where the lines cross are visible.
Use Shift Edge, Feather and Contrast to assist you here.
Click OK, and maybe do it again if you can't get it all done in one go- basically using this you can make a selection that looks like perfectly round discs, of various sizes, positioned over where the windrose lines crossed.
Make a new layer ad fill your new selection, set it's Fill to 0% and add a Stroke layer effect to draw your circles.
If it looks too neat you can rasterise the layer and roughen it or scuff it up with a layer mask.

You can even use this trick in conjunction with OldGuy's tutorial on roughening coast lines to generate new islands at exactly the points where the windrose lines cross, which seem more authentic to me.

Try it? Like it? Up my Rep!

[Hai-Etlik]

There isn't really a specific name for it. The border of a map extent is sometimes called a "neatline" although it isn't necessarily of the checked type.

The checked neatline is essentially an extension of the graticule, the coordinate grid, and it should line up with the graticule. As with the graticule itself it is a functional thing that says things about the map, as do compass roses, rhumb lines, scale bars, etc. It's entirely possible to say contradictory things about a map this way if you don't know what you are doing. It's kind of like not understanding how vehicles work, but knowing that you've seen vehicles that go under water, vehicles that have caterpillar treads, vehicles with turbojet engines, and vehicles with convertible soft tops. You could certainly draw something that has all of those properties, but if you understand the differences between a submarine, a tank, a jet airliner, and a sports car and why they have the traits that they do, then the combination very clearly doesn't make any sense.

Restraint is one of the most important tools for a cartographer. Knowing what NOT to put onto a map is in many ways more important than knowing what TO put on it.

That said, if your goal isn't so much to make a functional map, or even something that is a passable representation of one, so much as a picture that is an abstract evocation of "mappiness", then you are rather more free to toss things around willy nilly in the same way that if you were trying to create an abstract evocation of "vehicleness" rather than a convincing vehicle design, the convertible turbojet sports submarine tank might be a reasonable choice. I think actual maps are the best way to evoke "mapiness" but then I work win the geography field in real life.

As for the little circles at the intersections of rhumb lines, that doesn't make any sense to me. There really isn't anything significant about those points. Rhumb lines are just a reference for measuring bearings for marine navigation; the direction is all that's important.