13 replies to this topic

[Pete]

Hi everyone,

Something a little different from me this time ... I have a series of 6 route profiles for the Great Glen Way to draw and I wanted to get some feedback on my first draft of the first part of the route between Fort William and Gairlochy.

 fort_william_gairlochy.gif   105.02K   175 downloads

 fort_william_gairlochy_BLANK.gif   90.79K   103 downloads

I'm not sure if the trees and little houses necessarily add anything (especially as the trees tend to cover the detail of the profile) so I've posted one profile with details and one without by way of a comparison.

Has anyone done any work like this before or has anyone seen any good examples of this sort of diagram?

I didn't have any more to go on than "draw a profile of the route" so what you see is where my mind went first but I was wondering about doing away with the painterly elements and maybe categorising the route in terms of terrain or ability - using a series of little shoe imprints from sling-back kitten-heel mules for easy surfaces and hi-tec mountain boots with crampons for more arduous sections of trail ... for example .

Like I said, I don't have much information to work with just now but I'd appreciate any feedback.

Thanks.

[razornole]

Hi everyone,

Something a little different from me this time ... I have a series of 6 route profiles for the Great Glen Way to draw and I wanted to get some feedback on my first draft of the first part of the route between Fort William and Gairlochy.

 fort_william_gairlochy.gif   105.02K   175 downloads

 fort_william_gairlochy_BLANK.gif   90.79K   103 downloads

I'm not sure if the trees and little houses necessarily add anything (especially as the trees tend to cover the detail of the profile) so I've posted one profile with details and one without by way of a comparison.

Has anyone done any work like this before or has anyone seen any good examples of this sort of diagram?

I didn't have any more to go on than "draw a profile of the route" so what you see is where my mind went first but I was wondering about doing away with the painterly elements and maybe categorising the route in terms of terrain or ability - using a series of little shoe imprints from sling-back kitten-heel mules for easy surfaces and hi-tec mountain boots with crampons for more arduous sections of trail ... for example .

Like I said, I don't have much information to work with just now but I'd appreciate any feedback.

Thanks.

Hello Pete,

I'm not sure what the Great Glen Way is. Is it a race route, hiking trail, or a road?

I don't like the tree/house icons blocking the profile. The one without them is more communicative. Maybe you could try to bring the field of icons below the profile line. I think that they will still distract from your overall message, but I have grown fond of your use of these icons in your planview maps so maybe you could find a way to work with them here.

The yellow sun is a big distraction. It is the brightest element on the map so it keep drawing my eye away from the profile. Maybe try to reduce the opacity so it is not so saturated. It's always hard to work with the color yellow.

What is your vertical exaggeration? There appears to be a 40m elevation change but looks as though I am about to traverse the Andes or the Himalayas. Not sure if this is the message you want to convey or not.

Not crazy about Gairlochy rotated 90 degrees. Could you add a little extra to the profile so that.

When I make my profiles I tend to put my points of interests above and my geographic features underneath. In this case I would put a little more room in the bottom and put the river names down there. I don't know what Neptune's Staircase is.

Shift the 20m line so it is not broken by Inverlochy Castle and River Nevis.

It is an interesting profile and I can't wait to see it more developed.

kru

[Hans van der Maarel]

I really prefer the "basic" version (i.e. the second one) over the "pretty" one. The trees make it seem as if it's an oblique landscape view rather than a profile.

[Jacques Gélinas]

Quite nice,

Overall it's a neat profile representation. I like the soft colors,

My comments,

Like Kru mentioned I would consider 'smoothing-generalizing' out the profile.
Maybe try to align the vertical elevation labels in a column.
The elevation grid is discontinued is several place. Try keeping it continuous and knock it out for text only.
Consider adding a distance grid.
Because I don't know the area, I am a bit confused as to what is what. Maybe try working with different fonts to help out the reader.
I like the use of your trees, but not sure about the buildings. Especially the homes 'hanging' over Lochy River.
Also in English should it be Nevis River instead of River Nevis?
I vote to keep the sun there.

Regards,

[Pete]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I maybe shoud have introduced the Great Geln Way ... It's a long-distance trail between Fort William and Inverness suitable for all levels of walker but it also croassable by bike, boat, kayak and horse. If you run "Great Glen Way" through Google (other search engines are available!) you'll be able to get more information.

I tried moving the icons above and below the line of the profile but they didn't look right in either position. Also, with the scatter brush varying the size of the elements around their centre rather than their base I got a number of floaters that just looked ridiculous and the overhanging buildings that Jacques noticed. As people seem to like the style of my plan maps ( !) I've gone back to the drawing board to make a better map altogether rather than try to have one diagram to two things badly.

Sorry it's such a departure from the original and it's pretty rough! This is what the 6 maps would look like side by side - there is an overlap between each map that would enable you to join all 6 together if you wanted.

 all_routes.gif   985.47K   71 downloads

I've made a couple of cycling maps in the past with a profile at the bottom of the page but I've moved the profile to the top here so I can still have a horizon of sorts without interfering with the plan map below. Also, there should be plenty of room top and bottom to have labels above and below the profile for geographic/interesting features or to have certain things picked out in a different font, as Kru and Jacques suggested , but I don't now if there will be enough going on along the route to justify this - it may just come down to an aesthetic choice if the text looks better above or below. The extra room around the profile also means that if the text on the profile is rotated then I won't have to turn any annotation a different direction to get it to fit. I've also moved the title down into the middle of the map make a bit of a visual break and reinforce the idea that there is a change in projection from the top to the bottom of the page.

The profile along the top isn't quite right yet. It's the profile of the entire route not including overlaps between the 6 maps so I'll need to go back and make profiles for the part of the route on each page and then highlight the relevant section on the profile as in the example. What it does show is the issue with vertical exaggeration largely disappears when you consider the route as a whole - the first section now looks much more accessible as opposed to the alpine extravaganza in the first draft! I'm using Global Mapper to make the profiles and I've not found a way to manually set the vertical exaggeration so it's constant - Global Mapper just burps up a profile to fit inside the size of the pop-up window that the profile generator makes so when I make 6 different profiles, they are all the same size but they all have different vertical scales - I'll just have to manually transform each profile to fit inside the scale set by the highest profile.

The space under each profile will have a plan map of each part of the route in my usual style. I just used some OS maps to fill the gaps while I test the idea.

Interesting point you raised Jacques, about the River Nevis/Nevis River but River Nevis is correct apparently. There is the odd exception where you have the Balnagown River as opposed to River Balnagown but I think it may be bacuse it scans better as Balnagown River - I honestly don't know !

[Hans van der Maarel]

Yeah, the different vertical exaggerations are throwing me off, I think it's better to have Global Mapper do one continuous profile and then manually cut it into 6 pieces. May be a bit more work but it gives you a lot more control over the end result.

Another thing that's bothering me is that the profile sometimes seems to go vertically, or even overhangs. This is especially noticable on the 5th map.

[david17tym]

Hi Pete,

Couple of things I'd address:
1. Vertical exaggeration, needs to be constant - as Hans suggested process the whole section in one go.
2. Although a neat idea from a design point of view, making the profile fit the same length as the route map
means you are losing info on the profile e.g. in the first panel the whole section of route that veers
sharply 'up' through Fort William is represented on the profile by a relatively small stretch.
This 'shortening' of the profile has led to the near vertical stretches and overhangs Hans noted.

Beautiful work as ever though.
Dave

[GIS xtra]

How to create these route profiles ? thanx

[Pete]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

This is a bit more like it ...

 NEW_all_routes.jpg   806.33K   39 downloads

The problems with the profile being vertical and overhaning wasn't because the vertical scale was iffy but because I drew them badly to start with !

Another thing that's bothering me is that the profile sometimes seems to go vertically, or even overhangs. This is especially noticable on the 5th map.

... This 'shortening' of the profile has led to the near vertical stretches and overhangs Hans noted.

How to create these route profiles ? thanx

Fear not, the overhangs were actually parts of the gridlines from the original profile. I used Global Mapper to make the profiles which outputs an image rather than anything editable so I use the autotrace tools in Illustrator to quickly vectorise profile so I can have something to work with. There are various path fitting and minimum area settings and those jaggy bits were where the gridlines crossed the profile and couldn't be eliminated automatically. I left them in on the draft but I've drawn them out on this version. The profiles are still a little pointy but I can smooth that out more easily now. Also, the vertical scale is now constant across all of the profiles but I still have to add distance ticks along the profiles to give some indication of length.

I still have a bit more work to do with the annotation - I'm not completely happy with it just yet - but it's getting there ..!

[razornole]

Hello Pete,

I'm liking the style and overall feel of the map. Your pretty close to pulling something off that I have never seen done. I like the textures and the soft edges along with the colors. Great work.

Now along to my subjective opinions. I'm reading this map/s from left to right.

I think that you could push white blend further into profile to make more separation. I have no problem telling that there is a perspective and a profile view, but others my confuse the profile as a detailess background to the perspective map? (The sun looks a lot better not so saturated, I barely noticed it).

Fonts; way to much halo in my opinion. In fact the water features are next to impossible to read. I was on the fifth tile before I realized I was looking at the infamous Lock Ness. I couldn't even tell you the name of one of your streams, they are just that illegible. I can read the cities/towns, but I would say they are still a distraction. You have some sort of curving text on some of your mountains which I can't read, I don't know what you are labeling.

I would also say the same about your halo with the route. The route is the only saturated color on the map and it pops without the halo.

Title; have you tried using the blue/purple of your route line in the title. I think that would tie all three elements together.

The rivers are real hard to see.

That's it for now.
kru

[Pete]

Hi Kru - thanks for the input.

I know what you mean about the profile looking like it may be the horizon of the map below - I wondered about that myself and it was partly the reason for putting the title across the blend between the two elements. I moved the title and the bit of vignette up so the page is roughly 1/3 profile and 2/3 map. The addition of the horizontal scale (such as it is) on profiles also helps to divorce the map from the profile without beating the viewer around the head with it. I also added the Great Glen Way logo into the title to tie things together a bit more - I did try chaning the colour of the title like you suggested but I thought it looked a little odd.

I wasn't completely happy with the annotation either and the illegibilty was down to me using the fine version of the font and spacing the characters out too far. I've redone the annotation with more stocky versions of the font and altered the opacity of some of the halos so that the main points on the route are the most visible. The heirarchy I went for is something like:

Start/end points (purple, bold)
Major locks (ahem !) (blue, bold italic)
Settlements (grey)
Minor lochs and rivers (lighter blue, italic)
Mountains (light brown, condensed italic)
General landscape (light green, condensed)

I also got rid of some of the annotation around the edges of some of the maps where it wasn't really relvant to the part of the route and I tried to draw the text in around the route a bit more - I don't know if it's made much difference.

Anyway, here it is ...

 NEW_all_routes.jpg   875.34K   14 downloads

[Pete]

Gairlochy to South Laggan.

 NEW_all_routes_GAIRLOCHY.jpg   745.97K   21 downloads

Time for some nit-picking ... !

I didn't want to emphasise the rivers too much because the river data I have doesn't register particularly well with the relief shading and I didn't want to draw too much attention to it. The bumpmapping for the trees also overlaps the streams (and the loch shores in some areas - will have to do something about that!) which doesn't do much for their visibility either - the tree texture is not completely opaque so I left is working on the assumption that you would still be able to see parts of a small river through breaks in the tree cover.

Some of the texture on the mountains is clearly distored from the displacement to render the plan-oblique view of the map - it does't show up on the printed map but it is visible in the images.

[Pete]

Drumnadrochit to Inverness.

 NEW_all_routes_INVERNESS.jpg   868.22K   23 downloads

Similar issues as mentioned before but the title is purple in this one - just didn't like it much sorry !

[razornole]

That is much more legible, and annotating the profile really helps out.

Don't know if you have a reason to italicize the mountains. Normally italics are reserved for water features.

Great work,
kru