13 replies to this topic

[David Medeiros]

Attached is a draft of the Great Bight region of Australia to accompany an expedition story for Overland Journal. Looking for input on style and layout. Although the style is more or less defined by the magazine I am playing with a water effect to accentuate the ocean fill without breaking from the overall sepia tone of the maps. I used a grayish/blue inner glow on the water polygon to create a water color fade from shore into the sepia ocean fill.

The bluish line long the coast is the route that will be described in the story and is the only artwork to be colored like this on these maps. I know it may look like a water feature but I can't find suitable alternative color, the teal/blue seems to work well to pop the route without being harsh like red or orange might. And because no water shows up as blue on these I think reads ok (even if it breaks my rule of applying a water color to a naturalistic feature that isn't water).

I'm most interested in what people think about the font styles. In particular for the Indian Ocean and Great Bight labels. Do these look correct all caps? I like it but previous to this I would normally give water upper/lower like I do for other geographic features.

I'm not excited about the call outs in solid black and may change these. The maps do not normally get these call outs but this story has touch points that are not otherwise labelled on the map. I may screen them back to 90%k.

Anyway, have at it.

Thanks,

Dave

Attached Files

•  Great_Bight.jpg   713.13K   159 downloads

[sitesatlas]

Nice map. I don't think the halos are necessary around the labels for Nullarbor Plain or the parks -- in fact, the labels for the two reserves are rather hard to read.

I imagine the orientation of the map can't be changed, but it's too bad it isn't horizontal -- the vertical orientation creates a lot of empty space.

The color scheme isn't my favorite, but I think it works O.K. The inner glow works well to separate the ocean from the land. The capital letters look just fine to me too, since both are major features.

A scale of miles would be useful. BTW, there are two l's in Kalgoorlie.

[David Medeiros]

Nice map. I don't think the halos are necessary around the labels for Nullarbor Plain or the parks -- in fact, the labels for the two reserves are rather hard to read.

I imagine the orientation of the map can't be changed, but it's too bad it isn't horizontal -- the vertical orientation creates a lot of empty space.

The color scheme isn't my favorite, but I think it works O.K. The inner glow works well to separate the ocean from the land. The capital letters look just fine to me too, since both are major features.

A scale of miles would be useful. BTW, there are two l's in Kalgoorlie.

Thanks. I agree, those halos were unnecessary, a hold over from a previous one of these where they were needed to knock out the extra relief. The orientation is unfortunate but it's for a magazine and it would be worse to have the readers need to rotate the mag just to use the locator map. Color is supposed to be a sepia tone and evoke a historical National Geographic explorer look. It's the mag's style. Same on no scale or north arrow. And actually I like the uncluttered look as well as the color. It may look odd here but in the context of the magazine it works.

I'll put a new draft up in a few minutes.

[David Medeiros]

Here's new draft. Spelling corrected (thank you). Call-outs screened back to 90%k and no halo's on park names.

Can anyone who's looking at this tell me if the inner glow on the water fill reads as a faded blue to sepia or does it just look like a shadow effect to you?

Attached Files

•  Great_Bight.jpg   687.04K   72 downloads

[Hans van der Maarel]

Looks nice. I would suggest losing the halos around city names too. They're not really necessary on this map I think.

The inner glow to me appears to go from a dark blue/grey to sepia.

[razornole]

I can easily distinguish the water from land with the effects that you have used. Agree with Hans, the halos are a bit much on the city names. I'm kinda lost without a scale. Are 60 mile runs really point data?

Your first multiple beach run only has one leader, wouldn't that make it singular. Every call out has the word 'run/s' associated with it except for Bilbunya dunes. Is it a run or are you bringing my attention to a unique feature mentioned in the article? Have you tried this map without leaders? There is plenty of space.

Does the locator map need to be so prominent? Can you drop it to 85% or something similar?

Finally, I question whether the national park/preserves extend to the coastline?

Overall it looks good.

kru

[David Medeiros]

New draft. Locator reduced to 90%k. Removed halos from town names. Removed leaders. Slightly bluer inner glow on water.

The "multiple" in the multiple beach runs refers to a series of up and down runs in the same location, so there were multiple runs at each point indicated by the leaders. These notes and the dunes are references to specific points within the article. I was unsure of the dune typeface because it is a feature but only on the map because it is a note from the story. In the end I think it looks better with the geographic feature font.

I actually like this one without the halos, on previous similar maps I've done for these guys the relief made halos a necessity and I was trying to keep the style uniform.

My sources indicate that the parks do go to the shore (at this scale anyway). On a larger scale we might see a small separation but it would be lost at this scale.

Attached Files

•  Great_Bight2.jpg   691.64K   54 downloads

[MapMedia]

Good work!

Most of the map is blank, and I think it might be better to narrow the focus of the map on the trail / coast.
Colors are a bit too sandy / duty storm look.
I would remove the halos and go with 100% black for text.

[Nick H]

I like this. Most people know where Australia is so perhaps the locator map could just be of Oz, perhaps with one or two place names. Someone else mentioned about a scale I think.

Regards,
Nick.

[David Medeiros]

I like this. Most people know where Australia is so perhaps the locator map could just be of Oz, perhaps with one or two place names. Someone else mentioned about a scale I think.

Regards,
Nick.

The locator is sort of emblematic of the international nature of the magazine I think. With at least one or two of these maps per issue it's become the icon for each story map and I want it to be uniform in appearance between maps.

I agree on the scale though, I think it would be a welcome piece of information for a map that details an overland driving story. these are often very long distance routes involving weeks of travel and since the scale of each map changes depending on the length of the route and region it really ought to be there. I'll stick one on and see if the editor objects.

Also on the 'dusty' look of the map, that's exactly what I'm trying for. It's thier design and I'm trying to improve it while keeping the look. It's supposed to evoke a misty, sandy, sepia aged photo feel. Kinda sorta.

It's due this week so I need to wrap it up. You guys have helped, thanks. I'll post the final once it's done, no that it will look much different.

dave

[razornole]

New draft. Locator reduced to 90%k. Removed halos from town names. Removed leaders. Slightly bluer inner glow on water.

The "multiple" in the multiple beach runs refers to a series of up and down runs in the same location, so there were multiple runs at each point indicated by the leaders. These notes and the dunes are references to specific points within the article. I was unsure of the dune typeface because it is a feature but only on the map because it is a note from the story. In the end I think it looks better with the geographic feature font.

I actually like this one without the halos, on previous similar maps I've done for these guys the relief made halos a necessity and I was trying to keep the style uniform.

My sources indicate that the parks do go to the shore (at this scale anyway). On a larger scale we might see a small separation but it would be lost at this scale.

Hey Dave,

I think that it looks cleaner w/o the leaders. I don't know if this is your intention, but the 'run' labels have dropped in the visual hierarchy. Maybe this is due to moving them to the darker part of the water where they blend in more. They are more of a ground vs figure.

Have you tried using the same gray in the locator map, Australia, and Indian Ocean. They symmetry may help pull your eye through the map.

kru

[DaveB]

Sorry for coming in late on this.
The locator draws my eye more strongly than anything else on the map. Everything else seems subdued next to the big dark mass of continents in the locator.
It looks like you have a light tan outline on the ccoast. I would remove it. It doesn't help delineate the coast (your blue water does that much better) and does make it look like the parks don't quite reach the coast.

[David Medeiros]

Here's what I sent the editor. I tried to address a few of the last couple of comments. Simple, light scale bar added to top right (editors may want to remove, not sure), I like it. I screened back the world locator to 80%k which matches the type for AUSTRALIA, GREAT BIGHT and INDIAN OCEAN. Actually those 3 labels were already matched but as noted above they didn't look like they were the same so I bumped the smaller GREAT BIGHT type up to 85% and now they all look much closer in style.

The town and "runs" notation had been screened back to 90% which made them drop to the ground. I bumped them back up to 95% which I think floats them just enough but avoids the harsh look of full black on a map like this. I also removed the stroke on the shore line and I agree it looks better like this. I thought I needed it to mask the uneven boundary between the relief and the ocean fill, but it looks fine without it.

Anyway, thanks again for the extra eyes!

Dave

Attached Files

•  Great_Bight3.jpg   724.2K   38 downloads

[cartdeco]

Hi David,

A couple of factual errors:

Nullarbor Reserve should be Nullarbor National Park

Yellabinna Reserve should be Yellabinna Regional Reserve

There's also a large Marine Park south of these called the Great Australian Bight Marine Park. See www.environment.gov.au for more info.

Also, Nuytsland Nature Reserve runs along the coast from Cape Arid NP almost to the WA border. There's also a couple of significant caves in this park. See www.dec.wa.gov.au for more info. (do a text search to find the info).

To download park data try www.ga.gov.au and download the appropriate 1:250K sheetmap. There is a layer called reserves that will have the info you require.

You should probably show the Western Australian/South Australian border at Eucla and label the two states. There is a time zone change here.

To be correct, the Great Australian Bight extends between Cape Pasley in Western Australia and Cape Catastrophe in South Australia (not on map). Whilst this doesn't seem to be the focus of the route shown, it may be worthwhile showing the location of Cape Pasley.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Craig Molyneux