My Political Map

probstette

After much guidance from the forum, I have finished my map, for now.



I used the parchment template, Wroot-style star in the top left faded to 50% opacity, BW Vector symbols for the towers, with little coloured flags on, to denote capitals, and lots of patience in setting the political borders. I found that if I had them on top of each other they didn't quite glow, so I've left a tiny space between each. It comes out looking like a border state. The lines for shallow water I did myself using Ortho, after remembering a jigsaw I did when I was a kid, that had maps like that. As a final touch, to get the compass star at the bottom looking right, I exploded it, took off the N that was there, and put in one in the same text as I had used elsewhere.

It's taken me about four or five hours, but a lot of that was spent learning things. I am starting to understand the software, which is great.

evyn

I like it - unique style.

The font is great... but I find it a little difficult to read.

probstette

I wanted one that looked like calligraphy, and for some reason not all of mine were rendering. I'd have used the one that came with the Mercator style, but it wouldn't come out right for some reason.

There is an issue with letters overlapping each other, because of the curve I drew them on. I tried to draw on the outside of a curve each time, but there was still a bit of cramping. I guess I could explode the text and move the letters about a bit and regroup.

sdavies2720

Is the map somewhere we can see it?

probstette

Heh. Sorry, I out-thought myself, and deleted what I thought was a redundant copy. I'll put it back up.

Edit: Back up now

gregwr

I know how to solve your text bunching problem, as I had it too. If you increase the length of the arc the letters will spread out more evenly. I found that the text tries to fit itself to the arc so the larger your letters the longer the arc has to be. sometimes this means the arc needs to be much longer than you think and you may have to decrease the spacing to get it just right but no amount of increasing your letter spacing will make the letter un-bunch if the arc is too short. Thats a much simpler solution than exploding the letters, but not intuitive I know.