How to Handle Labels in a Crowded Map?

[Coriolis]

gRBVx0x.jpg

My current mapping project is big and complicated: an attempt to capture all the pertinent political map information from a big RPG book into a single map. This particular book focuses on the Western Empire from Palladium Fantasy RPG. It's a nation divided into a dozen regions and further divided into about 50 provinces. Each province has a capital city, each region has one provincial capital double as its regional capital, and a single city is the capital of the empire, it's own region, and its own province.

Thus, each province requires two labels: the name of the province/noble house that rules it (mercifully, these are almost all the same) and the name of the provincial capital. Each region requires a label that stretches across its internal provincial borders and therefore must compete with space with the provincial labels. That comes out to 112 labels.

My goal for this map is to include as much information as I can while keeping it nice to look at, and herein lies the problem. I've seen many fantasy maps that look awful because of overcrowded and confusing labels, and I think there's a real risk of that happening here.

My current convention is to curve labels of provinces and regions while keeping city labels straight, small, and oriented the same way. I'm trying to think of ways of helping the user tell the difference between label types, and I'm concerned that it may be too easy to confuse provincial and regional labels. My ideas so far:

+I could invert the colors for either the regional or provincial labels (having some with dark letters and bright highlights.
+I could color-code the provincial or regional labels to match the regions they describe.
+I could make some labels solid (probably the city ones, so as to minimize how much terrain they obscure.

Any ideas on other steps I might take? Any overall comments on the map? Please keep in mind that the version I'm posting here is a work in progress; I intend to do a lot more with the compass rose, scale, and adding a frame.

Thanks!

[Falconius]

Well depending on the medium you intend as final you could reduce the size of all the labels. You could also use different fonts (but for some reason people here tend to take issue with that, even though it works and has been common practice in mapmaking for a long time), for instance the fancy one you got on the big labels and something simpler on the smaller city labels. I wouldn't use different colours on the labels, but I think using different saturations of the same colour could be used to help distinguish them from one another.

[arsheesh]

I too would recommend reducing the size of both the province and capital labels, and their corresponding icons. In addition you might play around with: lowering the opacity of the regional names (I'd start at 50% and go from there); instead of curving the provincial labels try instead making them straight but in all caps (all of the curved text tends to detract from the clarity of the map); as you suggested, try out using different colors to distinguish the provincial labels from the city/capitals. Another thing you could try to attempt to save space is reduce the size of the regional labels as well, but make them in all caps and widen the space between each of the characters/letters in the labels.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Coriolis]

Thanks to you both for the advice!

I will shrink the labels and icons down some. I've sized this map to print at 300 dpi on 17x11 inch stock, so I don't want to go too small, but your points are well taken on that front. I did some shrinking and gap-increasing with the regional labels in the version I posted, and I'll try applying that technique to the provincial labels. I agree that all the curving provincial labels make things a bit confusing.

Regarding using different fonts, I've historically avoided it, but there is a similar light version of the font I use here that may serve. I'll give it a try.

I'll also try playing with saturations and opacity for different types of labels. Thanks again to both of you! I'll take a stab at revising this next week.

[Coriolis]

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I've made a lot of revisions and tweaks for looks and clarity:
+All Western Empire city markers are about 1/3 smaller than they were.
+I shrank most of the labels so they wouldn't crowd out the things they're labelling.
+I fine-tuned the sizes and placements of all labels.
+City labels are now solid and shiny.
+Provincial/Family labels are in a thinner font and in ALL CAPS to make them easier to distinguish from city and regional labels. I also un-curved them all, as I think that so many curved labels made the map more confusing.
+Regional labels now have a bit of color in them to match their regional borders.

Please let me know what you think, and if you see any opportunities for further refinement/improvement.

[vanScoota]

It looks a lot better as one doesn't get overwhelmed anymore by the sheer amount of labels. And the different types of labels are much more distinguishable.