4 replies to this topic

[Dennis McClendon]

OK, here's both a map for feedback and a design challenge. This is a typical letter-size map for a client marketing an industrial distribution center. It's deliberately in muted colors both for fashion and so the pointer comes very prominently to the foreground.

The client is now asking me to "show the state lines more clearly." Now this is the same client who yesterday wanted me to do a Toronto metro map in portrait orientation, but with north up, but let's look past that. How can I make the state lines more prominent without taking them out of the rivers?

 Perry.GIF   81.8K   226 downloads

here's a PDF of the whole map
 St_Louis_Cleveland.pdf   258.33K   126 downloads

[Polaris]

well, the first things that comes to mind is to make the state lines dashed - the typical long/short dash seems to remind nearly everyone of a political boundary

since you are reversing out the lines, could the background color be darkened just a bit - any amount you can afford will help... in the PDF, i can't make out the state lines at all against the background (are they there?)

I really like the colors

eric

btw, your highway numbers look crowded in their shield to me, but I like the way they are reversed

this is the area I was raised in btw...

[Martin Gamache]

 St_Louis_Cleveland.jpg   80.77K   213 downloads

I'd go with a lightly colored fat line underneath the rivers. Fatter undreneath the rivers (9pt) than elsewhere 7pt. The western boundary of Illinois could even be 10pt. The diffence in weights is not very noticeable because the river sits on top. Not sure if this solution fits your limited palette? But the light orange contrasts well with the blue of the river, yet still does not call so much attention to itself as to take away from the prominence of the callouts.

[Hans van der Maarel]

I like Martin's suggestion. Probabely the best given that the boundaries follow rivers in many places.

Are you limited to these colors?

[Dennis McClendon]

I think Martin's is a good suggestion, though I have an ocher color, used on the metro maps, that might fit better than the orange with this color palette.

I just learned that the client is rasterizing these PDFs in Photoshop and then printing them (she called to ask if I could send "higher-resolution PDFs") so this may be a problem of gamut difference between Mac and PC. Especially given Polaris's comment that he can't even see the lines in the PDF, perhaps I just need to darken the background. Currently it's C3 M3 Y4 K0.