by edbeard on Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:27 am
I really hate the ferry routes. They are worse than before. The blue underneath the red with the gaps looks very strange. Especially so in the middle of the map with the darker blue. You should change the style of them. At the least a new colour is needed. Red is not a good choice. Try white, grey or black. But, honestly try out a new style. To put it very lightly, they are distracting to the eye. That's something you don't want.
I'm not sure why there's a killer whale there. I'm assuming they're native to the area, but still you don't want something popping out at you like that. I'd get rid of it altogether, but at the least move it away from the land a bit and reduce the opacity (make it more transparent). Just remove it. It doesn't add anything to the map.
The mountain in the lower right. Why is there a box? Is it really important to the area to have it as a territory? It just seems weird that it's the only mountain there. Is that geographically correct, or are you just placing this one in there? Right now when people see it they won't know if it's part of a continent or not. That's a problem.
I still don't understand why you have 2 different coloured fonts. I don't think you'd even be able to convince me that different continents need either black or white, but some continents have both white and black font. It makes the map look very odd. I'd pick one (black or white) and find out which looks best on everything. Or, play around with it a bit. Try out different styled fonts, with both colours. Maybe add a glow or a shadow to them.
The title being in the middle. I don't think it'll work there. Again it just quite odd. I don't think a title needs to be fancy schmancy, but when you put it in the middle there, you force it to be simple and blend in and I don't think that's good. It should stand out as the title, but not distract from the map. Put it at the top so people see it and say, "Ok this map is called Puget Sound" and then they look at the map. I just think the title and legend should be out of the way of the map itself and not in the middle of everything else.