7 replies to this topic

[Justin]

Hi

This is my first project with MAPublisher, it is a map of German settlements in Texas. At one time, up until World War 1, over 90% of the population of six Texas counties spoke only German. After the war, it became so unpopular to be German that all of the Texas Germans taught their children only English and the language and culture died out. I thought it would be fun to make a map and timeline of Texas Germans to learn a little bit more about my local history and also the software.

I cant really make the map any larger on the layout as the text is already pretty small, but I dont have a lot of experience at laying out type and information along with a map. I am sure I could rearrange it to be more efficient (on the PDF mentioned below).

This is my first posting of a map i've made, but I would appreciate criticism and comments, thank you. Try not to be too brutal!

JPG preview http://www.aaroads.com/Justin/map.JPG

Entire PDF (10 MB) http://www.aaroads.c...in/GermanTX.PDF

Thanks
Justin

Attached Files

•  Picture_4.png   617.49K   171 downloads

[Dennis McClendon]

Looks very nice to me. The content seems a little thin: just founding dates and some placename histories, right? On design, only two small things:

I would try to simplify the rivers and county lines. They are so complex that they sometimes double back on themselves.

I like the Copperplate typeface for county names, but I'm not a big fan of the optically generated small caps since the initial cap looks bolder than the rest of the word. I would just make county names all caps and slightly letterspaced.

[Justin]

Thank you for the comments, i'll try what you suggested and see how it looks. I tried to remove the county lines whenever they conflicted with a river (some spots looks like they conflict but the county line just doesnt follow the river there...)

The content is really thin, yeah, there wasnt a lot of information to go on. I was going to do isopleths of settlement dates but there just isnt enough historical information on it that I can find. Ill mess with the county names, definitely, thank you.

[Dennis McClendon]

Take a careful look at those county lines. They probably should follow the rivers even if the dataset has points in slightly different places.

As for content, you may want to see what the Institute of Texan Cultures or the Handbook of Texas Online have. In addition, you could add the percent of German heritage for each county for the 1900 census. It might be best to do that on a smaller inset map of all Texas counties.

[MapMedia]

Well done. Very interesting subject.
The PDF is really nice.

For placename fonts, is that Frutiger? Good choice.

[Jean-Louis]

Yes, interesting subject indeed!
the PDF is very well laid out , inviting and attractive.
I love that North indicator.! Where does it come from? Is it something from that community or did you design it.?
Congratulations, very well done

[Justin]

Thank you for all the nice comments, I was a little worried that it would be awful awful feedback!

In re: to questions

The north indicator is just something I made in photoshop. I was trying to mix the German flag with the Texas flag.
I used frutiger for the placenames and cochin for hydro names - avenir for everything else that is not "Germanic" type.

[Sam Pepple]

Justin.

The overall layout is beautiful.
I have a few suggestions, mainly pertaining to the rivers.


River type:

It is not necessary to follow each river with the word "river"; I think the hue and style clearly defines it as a river.

The point size is a bit large when compared with the other type.

Watch the placement of river names. When you have such detailed river data, you want to make the text generally follow the major curves. Make sure that the baseline is close enough to the actual river * see Colorado River in Colorado county.


River linework:

When viewing the map fully zoomed out the river hue is too saturated and it's hierarchically to great considering the theme of the map.


County type.

I like the small capitals in the Copperplate face. If you decide to continue using them, check Comal county, because it is the only county with all large caps.



good work and good luck.

Cheers
SAM