9 replies to this topic

[Cartisan Maps]

For awhile now I've been thinking about attempting to make a globe. I've seen few modern globes that I care for, and so one of these days I think I'll just end up making one for myself.

Projecting the geographic data seems straight forward enough, but I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on the physical nature of a globe.

In the forums here I've found threads discussing a bean bag globe that Hans worked on, and a carved, cherry wood globe. Unfortunately no links to pictures, and most of Hans's thread was lost.

Does anyone have experience working with paper gores or mache, or using glass or plastic to create an illuminated globe? What about cloth? And of course, then there's the whole area of inks, paints, dyes, etc.

Thanks for you insights..

Brody.

[Hans van der Maarel]

A prototype sample here and official website here.

These globes are made up of 6 separate gores, each 72 degrees wide (there's a generous overlap to allow for small errors in stitching them together). They're printed on cloth. Projection is a simple polyconic, but at the final stage of production, the gores are modified a bit to allow for the stretching of the fabric. This results in it not being a perfect sphere. Manifold is used to combine raster and vector data, Illustrator is used for adding the texts and symbols and Photoshop is used for the final phase (scaling to the right proportions).

The one thing that's most difficult in this project is figuring out the right colors and styles to use. The fabric has a bit of structure, so it's not possible to have texts as small as on paper. 8 pt is about the smallest I dare use. Also, due to the nature of printing on fabric, it's not possible to run a small test print.

When I started this project, I printed out some test gores and stuck them on a small polystyrene sphere (for sale in most hobby/craft stores). Didn't work that well as paper doesn't really want to be bent in 2 different directions at the same time. You would never be able to do a paper globe with only 6 gores.

Final word: the style seen in the samples I linked to is not going to be the final style. We've decided on a more high-contrast background image, which is being printed now.

[Cartisan Maps]

Looks like a good product Hans! So the final has Tom Patterson's Natural Earth swapped for another image? When you have one available, I'm interested to see a photo of the final product.

Good point about the font size limations that cloth has. If I go that route I'll make sure to keep that in mind. Fabric seems like a strong candidate for a medium I might work with.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Looks like a good product Hans! So the final has Tom Patterson's Natural Earth swapped for another image? When you have one available, I'm interested to see a photo of the final product.

No photo yet, but here's a small sample:
 java.jpg   75.28K   114 downloads

It's actually Tom Patterson's Natural Earth, but I worked the colors a bit. The original is rather 'flat' in color, my client wanted something that stands out more. We went back and forth over a couple of different options and eventually settled on this.

Good point about the font size limations that cloth has. If I go that route I'll make sure to keep that in mind. Fabric seems like a strong candidate for a medium I might work with.

The outlines around the letters that you can see in the sample are another potential pitfall. If they're too small, you won't notice them at all once they're printed on fabric. If you make them too big, you will notice them. It's hard to get them just right (where you don't notice the outlines, but you do notice the effect they have). I had them smaller in a previous version, that proved totally ineffective. Made them larger for this one, but I don't dare to make them even larger... As you can see I only use them where necessary.

[MapMedia]

The ordering page is only in Dutch Io non capisco niente!

Noticed Hawaii Islands. I believe the name of the state is just Hawaii, and the geographical term for the islands is the Hawaiian Islands - maybe a tired point of debate, but had to mention.

[Hans van der Maarel]

The ordering page is only in Dutch Io non capisco niente!

You can always email them: info@oolaalaa.com

Noticed Hawaii Islands. I believe the name of the state is just Hawaii, and the geographical term for the islands is the Hawaiian Islands - maybe a tired point of debate, but had to mention.

The images on my website are still of prototype 1, I should really update them We've discussed the Hawaiian Islands before and based on that I changed it to Hawaiian Islands.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Okay, I replaced the sample images:

 oolaalaa_sample2.png   126.7K   103 downloads  oolaalaa_sample7.png   288.3K   98 downloads  oolaalaa_sample10.png   334.29K   101 downloads


more here

[natcase]

Also, due to the nature of printing on fabric, it's not possible to run a small test print.

When I started this project, I printed out some test gores and stuck them on a small polystyrene sphere (for sale in most hobby/craft stores). Didn't work that well as paper doesn't really want to be bent in 2 different directions at the same time. You would never be able to do a paper globe with only 6 gores.

There are prepared fabrics you can print on directly from a plotter/injet printer. Would any of these have worked? Probably not the same give as what you are ultimately printed on, but probably better than paper. I wonder if any of these would make it possible to do one-off custom versions, now that you have the projection and gore-lines figured out...

[Hans van der Maarel]

There are prepared fabrics you can print on directly from a plotter/injet printer. Would any of these have worked? Probably not the same give as what you are ultimately printed on, but probably better than paper.
I wonder if any of these would make it possible to do one-off custom versions, now that you have the projection and gore-lines figured out...

Interesting. I'm not sure whether the color reproduction would be comparable, I suspect some of the color 'feeling' comes from the slight stretching effect. I'm hoping to get a sample swatch so that I can at least see the difference between my screen and the printed result. I'll see if I can find out some more on this though.

As for one-offs... for the XXL-version, we're talking of gores of about 6 by 3.5 feet in size, you'll need a pretty big plotter to be able to do that in one go. The printers actually combine the various gore images (also for different sizes) into a larger image to waste as little fabric as possible. With a one-off, you don't have that option.

[Cartisan Maps]

Using the print-on fabric sheets was one of the ways I've thought to explore. I might be forced to limit myself in size, but it might be a place to start. A similar option would be to use iron on medium, which can also be fed through an inkjet. If you could tile these together nicely, then you'd be able to increase your gore size substantially.

Of course, they would just be the poor man's version of what Hans has made.

Along the same lines as my original question, have you folks come across any good literature discuss older techniques used in making globes?

Brody.