8 replies to this topic

[magictune]

Hello everybody,
I've posted couple of maps here during last few months. I've been paying attention to some kind critics I've received and tried to improve my skills. Here's the last map I've been working on for my website:

Map of Thailand

Furthermore, I'd like to post a question to some older forum members. It is a common standard to use serif fonts for hydrographic features (seas, channels, bays) in order to distinguish them in a better fashion , yet how about island names ? Are they considered to be "ground" or "sea" feature ?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[David Medeiros]

The map looks really good. Nice job.

I consider islands to be "geographic features", similar to any major land feature like a peninsula, point, mountain etc.. I usually give these types of features a sans serif italic font in black, grey, brown or tan depending on the specific feature type and map use. But I also often use a sans serif italic font for water in blue, usually for rivers and lakes, while reserving the serif font with increased letter spacing for large ocean features (oceans, bays etc.). Again that depends on the type of map and how modern or traditional I want it to look.

I noticed on your map that rivers, bays and ocean labels are all serif while the few lake labels I see are italic sans serif. I'd standardize between the lakes and rivers making them the same base font, whether serif or sans. I also think your river labels could use less spacing in some places and perhaps a smaller font size to better fit the river lines.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Nice looking map indeed. There is a subtle color difference between Thailand and the other countries, right? Maybe that's a bit too subtle.

Not sure whether I would qualify as an 'older' member (just turned 35) but I tend to consider islands as ground features and prefer to label them with a serif font, regular, black or grey. Water features (lakes, rivers, seas) in the same serif font, italics, dark blue.

[Charles Syrett]

I usually do it the same way that young Hans does. (Old enough to be your dad, Hans.) But then again, sometimes I use all sans serif for all type on a map, if I feel that's the kind of look that's called for.

David, I was interested to see your remarks about the labeling of rivers. The mainstream (no pun) tradition calls for very small river names, with little or no letterspacing. This is the way it's usually done in atlases, and it's the way Imhof recommends. However, there's also a convention, used on North American topo maps, of varying the size and letterspacing of river names. If you've ever seen medium scale (1:50,000) topo maps of parts of the Canadian Shield, where there are lots of drainage features going every which way, you'll see why this approach can work very well.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[magictune]

Thank you all for your attention. From what I've seen, you all agree to use serif font type for island labels. I'll keep this in my mind. Stay well.

[Yong]

your relief looks smooth. can i ask what is the source?

[magictune]

your relief looks smooth. can i ask what is the source?

No problem at all. It is www.naturalearth.com shaded relief raster data at 1:10m. The way I understand it is generated from SRTM Plus dataset. You can checkout this great site, the data are in public domain.

[Strebe]

Why the Mercator?

[Agnar Renolen]

Nice looking map indeed. There is a subtle color difference between Thailand and the other countries, right? Maybe that's a bit too subtle..

Agree. One technique tfrequently used to enhance an area of interest is to remove all ( possibly but the largest) labels and symbols outside the area of interrest. I reckon it will do the trick on this map.