Typography and Symbology on a Painted Physiographic Basemap
Designing typography and symbolic reference information into a painted map.
Design Goal
The basemap painting is beautiful. It’s importance in the visual hierarchy is significant to the purpose of the map, as the visual anchor for the addition of the reference information. The cartographic elements are strictly informational, there is no particularly striking spatial patterning revelation in them, therefore no need to emphasize them any more significantly in the visual hierarchy beyond a design intention of beautiful, balanced relationships within the basemap painting.
The map is intentionally designed to meet the display requirements in the exercise for computer and mobile device displays at almost any scale. It reproduces well in printed color, less-so in grayscale and black & white.
Typestyle Choices
Sitka’s serif design is consistent with a typographic tradition of using serif typestyles for oceanic, lacustrine and riverine features. Sitka is compact, comfortable, offering slightly additional weight in the serifs, stems and bowls, subtly enhancing it’s visual emphasis for comfortable legibility in the midst of other visually competitive cartographic elements.
Arial’s san serif design is consistent with a typographic tradition in cartography of using san serif typestyles for cities and regional features. It’s letterforms are easy to read and strong enough to stand on their own visually in the midst of other cartographic elements. Nothing fancy here, just strong, basic cartographic typography.
Use of Color in Typography
Color and effects have been employed consistently on a feature-type basis, selected for cartographic traditions and to contrast and compliment coloration in basemap painting. Where visual hierarchy imbalances occur when consistently applied within a feature-type, subtle differences in hue and lightness have been applied to correct the visual hierarchy (Examples – The names of the Great Lakes, and the outlines on ‘Great Basin’ and ‘Sierra Nevada.’)
Use of Symbols – Graphic and Typographic
Symbols that are suggestive of points have been developed for cities. Symbols for cities with populations greater than 1,000,000 people are larger than cities less than 1,000,000, as are their typographic names. City symbol sizes are intentionally merely suggestive of relative populations, and may also be scaled appropriately for their relationship with the physical features of the basemap (example – San Francisco.)
Point symbols have been carefully developed for mountain peaks. The glyphs are intentionally transparent and faint; the mountain peaks in this exercise are well-symbolized by their graphic representations in the basemap painting. The symbolic typographic treatment of each peak name is also clearly associated with each peak, in reasonable visual hierarchy, and in their names, which all contain the words ‘peak’ or ‘mount.’
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