9/5/2023 0 Comments Very simple states map![]() I got rid of the road network entirely, after realizing that for a map like this it would be completely useless. To put the focus on the United States, I lightened all foreign labels and cities, rather than darkening the land as I had initially done. I wanted the land to stand out from water, so I had to settle on using a gentle “ocean strip”. My map had become a mess-in particular, the very light greys were rendered much darker than I wanted. The printer was made to draw black letters on white paper, nothing more. But as soon as I made a test print, it became clear that even 3 greys was too much for my poor monochrome Brother. Roads, rivers, urban form and coastline all looked crisp and easily distinguishable on the Retina screen. I took great care to make sure they were all visually distinct, and to some extent I succeeded. How would I, a color junkie, handle the withdrawal?Īt first I relied on about 4-5 shades along the grey scale (white, black, and a couple of greys). By making the map black and white, I would make it more accessible. If I want this map to be a public resource, I have to design for the lowest common denominator. First of all, surely I’m not the only person whose day-to-day printer is monochrome. There were two realizations that helped rationalize away this initial frustration. To my great frustration, a few test prints showed the conversion to be quite unreliable. I disregarded that fact, thinking that a color map could auto-convert reasonably well to black and white. The printer is fantastic, but only prints in monochrome. ![]() This is due to my printer-being a cheap college student, I had bought the cheapest laser printer I could find, which turned out to be a Brother HL-L234. The most interesting constraint was that the map had to be in high-contrast black and white. It was also tedious at times, such as when I had to change the sizes of all the city dots. I love tinkering with little adjustments to see which label placement or line thickness pleases my eye ever so slightly more. Making this map was generally pretty fun. It seemed like a simple, printable US map should have existed out there, but alas, I couldn’t find one that satisfied my needs-so I made one. Except all the maps were ugly, or inaccurate, or imprecise. I usually Google Image search some kind of basemap, and scribble on that. When making maps, or just looking at data, I do a lot of sketching. This is a general-purpose map of the United States, designed from the bottom up to be printable by everyone, and to look great on the humble 8.5 x 11 paper.
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