Map Design Questions

[thoerr]

Hi, I'm designing a map of the Roman Empire for a group of RPers and myself.

When I presented my progress thus far, I recived a "It's acceptable/ok" from one of the members. Well, acceptable isn't going to cut it for me. Unfortunately, no one in my forums know anything about graphic design (and I don't have much to show myself. Here's the section of the map I've drawn up. (keep in mind, information like territory names and such will be added later, I just want to focus on colors and design right now):

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a112/romanemp/spain.jpg

What I really want to know is what I can do to make the map look better. What's displayed is only the start, but I didn't want to do the whole mediterranian area if it was going to end up changed ;)

I don't want bright and saturated colors, it should be more "old" while making it look good.

Keep in mind it will be on my site using this (http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a112/romanemp/scroll.jpg)design I drew up and want it to keep the same theme. You might as well give suggestions on it while your at it :)

[Digital Angel]

There's too many colors used in the countries. Usually a map uses the base (paper) color and some other desaturated colors to distinguish between countries.

Get color ideas from this map (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/asia_minor_1849.jpg). There's crosshatching instead of shading.

(This is really easy to do in Photoshop. Create a 5x5px file, choose the pencil tool (not the brush), and use a 1px or 2px pencil. Make a line at the top of the document to make your scanline/crosshatch. Go to edit->define pattern. Go to your map and create a new layer. Select the areas where your shading will be. Choose the bucket tool, and select pattern, select the line you created , and fill in the area. Put the layer to multiply mode.)

Download a stock image of yellowed paper, and use that as the background and build up from there.

Just research old maps and apply your map to the guidelines you find.

[thoerr]

Thanks for the suggestions! I looked at some other maps and I like the crosshatching idea.

I desaturated the province colors some more and added the "beach" highlights around the continent.

I also darkend the "shadow" of the continent a bit more to contrast against the water.

One thing to consider though, is while making the map look great- I don't want it to look boring or depressing- I want some color and want the water to be blue.

Here's the updated version.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a112/romanemp/map2.jpg

I'm pretty happy with it, but of course I'll have to see what the other members think ;) If you have any further suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it- your comments were very helpful and I'll do anything to make it better.

[Digital Angel]

You're welcome.
http://fp.ayrshireroots.plus.com/Genealogy/Old%20Maps/Europe_map.jpg
This was a neat map I came across, it has lots of color and still manages to have an old look.
You might want to start adding in things like rivers, mountain shading, longitude and latitude lines and the outside numbers and letters grid if you're going for a realistic look.

[Builtdown]

What´s the deal with the shadows between territory lines? Those don´t look very good.

I think it´s too "round" in many ways. And the "beach"-highlights make it look like a mac button. Not very roman style...


- b

[Flakky]

I edited the image, added a paper looking texture over your map image and changed it into an heightmap and made the black parts lighter. You should see it youself.
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6246/mapnd0.png (http://imageshack.us)

Here is a second image showing the light parts (everything except black) more like the orriginal image while the black part stays thesame.
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/1315/maplesski8.png (http://imageshack.us)