January 2019 Challenge: The Dystopian Multiverse

[aeshnidae]

A great list. I dig the b&w-red colors, but I'm not convinced by the outer glow on the dark background too.
If you want some more locations, you may consider countries and islands visited by Gulliver, although their location may be controversial. Also, I know you have a lot of references in the United States, but A Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic and probably my favorite post-apocalyptic novel.

I thought about including at least one location from Gulliver's Travels but I wasn't sure it counts as a dystopia. I will ponder some more...

[bkh1914]

Glad you are getting back to normal. Having the flu sucks.

This looks a lot better, especially for the labels that extend into the ocean.

The problem I always have with a black outer glow is that it makes the letters appear darker with small font sizes. Making the font color brighter sometimes helps...

That sounds like a great idea but I'm not sure how to go about it in Photoshop.

The old-fashioned way (non-layer effect way) would be to hide everything except the layers with the outer glow and create a new layer from visible (I don't remember what that's called in Photoshop). Then change the color of that layer to be the outer glow color (remove the font color). Two ways to do that: a) lock the alpha channel, fill with the outer glow color, unlock the alpha channel; or b) alpha to selection, fill with outer glow color, deselect all. Then gaussian blur that layer 2-3 times the width of the outer glow and move it to the bottom of the label layer stack.
Since this is a manual operation, you have to redo it every time you make a change to your text.

[aeshnidae]

Thoughts on the black behind the labels (see North America) versus no black? I feel like adding the black makes it easier to read, but I'm not sure I like how it looks.

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[Azélor]

There is a massive geographic disparities.
I guess some cities are more fun to destroy than others.
As a Canadian, the last hockey player sounds very apocalyptic, or related to climate changes. (but I don't even like hockey)

I would just like to point out that Labrador is on the Atlantic coast, north of Newfoundland.

[Ilanthar]

Nice work! It has a cool retrofuture look.

[Tenia]

No black for me. It's not any easier to read and I don't know, but it just doesn't add anything

[ThomasR]

I'd recommend trying a lighter red outer glow on dark backgrounds and a darker red on light backgrounds but I have a problem with outer glows

[aeshnidae]

There is a massive geographic disparities.
I guess some cities are more fun to destroy than others.
As a Canadian, the last hockey player sounds very apocalyptic, or related to climate changes. (but I don't even like hockey)

I would just like to point out that Labrador is on the Atlantic coast, north of Newfoundland.

Thank you for correcting my geography error! I absolutely love that one of Canada's contributions to dystopian literature is called The Last Hockey Player. It's perfect. And yes, there are major geographic disparities in dystopian fiction, as well as authors of dystopian fiction. I learned quite a lot about the topic while creating this map. From what I've seen, the US and UK pump out the most dystopian fiction (and provide the majority of the settings for dystopian stories). Next is Russia (the first modern dystopian fiction is We, written in 1921 by Yevgeny Zamyatin), followed by Japan and then Sweden. Not a lot of dystopian fiction comes out of the Middle East or China, for different reasons. I feel like I should write a scholarly paper about it!

Nice work! It has a cool retrofuture look.

Thanks, Ilanthar! That's what I hoped to achieve.

No black for me. It's not any easier to read and I don't know, but it just doesn't add anything

Thank you, that feedback is very helpful.

I'd recommend trying a lighter red outer glow on dark backgrounds and a darker red on light backgrounds but I have a problem with outer glows

Good idea! Thanks!

[MistyBeee]

'just wanted to say I'm watching with eyes widely open. I definitely know nothing about dystopian universes, so I have no clue about what is happening here this month. But I'm here, and I also think some outer glows may worth to be tested ! ^^

[aeshnidae]

I played around with various outer glows but nothing looked quite right. Then I played around with the stroke and think that helped. I fixed the issue with the crosshairs and some spacing issues. This might be done.

I decided not to use my usual compass (I know you love it, MistyBeee! ) and instead used the outline of the mockingjay pin from The Hunger Games. The green text pays homage to some additional dystopian stories and to Lost (which I guess is dystopian in a way, but mostly I just like to sneak in the numbers and, in this case, the coordinates for where Charles Widmore downed a fake version of Oceanic Flight 815). The font is Conthrax.

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