6 replies to this topic

[Gretchen Peterson]

I've been staring at this typography map for so long that I'm starting to hate it. Please give me some feedback regarding whether or not it is decent enough to be put in print.

It will be published in a print book I'm putting together and will become the example for a section on typographic mapping. It only has to serve as an example of this kind of map, it does not really have to do anything else. In fact, the bit that you see here would be the exact same bit that would be in the book, I'm not going to fill it out anymore (unless the advice from CartoTalkers is that I should).

Black, gray, and green text is in Cisalpin and the river and bay names are in Palatino Italics.

Attached Files

•  typemap.jpg   186.06K   211 downloads

[Dennis McClendon]

Mmm, seems a little clumsy in various ways. Using U&lc means that Bolton looks different along the shore. You could use all caps, or you could start each line with a different character, so some would say ltonBolto. I think I'd do the bay as bold italics but not reversed. This way you have a map with type on top rather than a map composed of type. It also seems to me that a love of typographic forms is intrinsic to doing this properly. Here, the letterspacing along the creeks and various other places is not very pleasant. Bolton is misspelled in places and has a random period. Hwy 101 doesn't appear continuous; probably should have labels along the route instead of transverse to it.

[David Medeiros]

I assume you've seen the Axis typographic maps? Maybe there's some style cues you can apply from them. It may be difficult to achieve a really polished look in a GIS alone. Are you working only in Arc for this? Your example is a little haphazard but laying type in Arc is very difficult to do well IMO. What I notice most about your map is that the type doesn't seem to fill in the space of the feature it represents. I think you need flow to the labels, more layering of labels and probably a greater range of sizes with most going smaller to help fill in the areas.

Have you looked at the NG Surname map? It shows a more analytical approach to typographic mapping that may work better as a GIS example with type representing qualitative and quantitative data in a single symbol and less need for hardcore manual label work.
http://ngm.nationalg...mes-interactive

I agree with Dennis that an appreciation for type itself is key to getting this right. A map as simple as one that contains only type for feature symbols is probably (paradoxically) one of the most difficult to execute properly. I am a firm believer in emulation for practice in map design but I've never had the guts to try typographic mapping, looks way too hard!

[Gretchen Peterson]

Yes, it appears as though it needs help. I'll be working to make it better. Thanks for your suggestions! This is my first foray into typography mapping and it is definitely harder than it looks.

[DaveB]

Oh yeah, very tricky.

(the apparent "period" after "Boloton" is actullay the dot in the i of "Lindsay")

[Hans van der Maarel]

This is my first foray into typography mapping and it is definitely harder than it looks.

Yep, it's definitely a struggle to get it to look just right. I tried my hand it as well some months ago and ended up spending half a day, if not more, on just a small section.

 apeldoorn_typografie_overview.jpg   81.66K   87 downloads  apeldoorn_typografie_detail.jpg   113.5K   104 downloads

I did cheat: the reddish "bebouwing" (building) is a big text area where I just copy/pasted the same few lines of text a lot of times. By making the sides of that area jagged I avoided repeating patterns. The roads are drawn on top as white lines, with black type on top of those.

[Gretchen Peterson]

Here's the latest iteration.

There are some great examples of type maps from Hans, Axis Maps, Hugo Ahlenius, to name a few. I didn't want to write about them in my book without having actually attempted one. I originally thought it was all about jamming as much type in there as possible but then came the realization that it is more about pattern, and for pattern to work well you have to have a lot of one thing and only splashes of the other things (80/20, perhaps). I'm sure this one isn't wonderful either but it has helped immensely! Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

[New edit: changed map colors]

Attached Files

•  TypeMapRevision.jpg   511.21K   67 downloads
•  TypeMap2.jpg   474.6K   59 downloads