The First Human Powered Circumnavigation of the Globe - Comission

[RobA]

expedition360 worldmap.jpg

This map is a part of a commission that has been keeping me quite busy recently, and will keep me busy for a while, yet.

Expedition 360 was a successful attempt at one of the last great firsts for true circumnavigation: reaching antipodal points on the surface of the globe using only human power (no motors or sails). Bicycles, in-line skates, kayaks, swimming, rowing, walking and a unique pedal powered boat were used by Englishman Jason Lewis and an international team to travel over 45,000 miles across five continents, two oceans and one sea (12th July 1994 - 6th October 2007).

Jason Lewis is (finally) publishing a set of three books, and was looking for someone to do the maps in a historical/traditional style. I created this map, which will be included in all three of the books, along with three other detailed maps, so far (Europe, Atlantic Crossing, 1/2 of USA), and still have 9 or so maps.

I started with a large (9000x4500) high resolution image of earth in equi-rectangular format, and manually plotted the detailed route on this map, working from scans of hand charts, as GPS data was not available to me.

For the world map, and each successive stage map, I re-project this base map using a projection that best displays the area and route, then hand trace this using Inkscape. Also in Inkscape, I freehand the rivers, lay down mountains, trace out the route, trace out any national or local borders that are desired, and add labeling as agreed upon. Lastly, I bring it into Gimp to composite the vector layers together, detail masking, applying shading and borders, and making small corrections to the rasterized version of each map.

I'll upload a link to the books once they are available...

-Rob A>

[dangerdog15]

Very nice piece! Very professional and easy to read. Other than the font which seems to be a little over-used in graphic design, I have no complaints. Well done!

Did you use the pencil tool in Inkscape to accomplish the route?

[RobA]

Very nice piece! Very professional and easy to read. Other than the font which seems to be a little over-used in graphic design, I have no complaints. Well done!

Did you use the pencil tool in Inkscape to accomplish the route?

Yeah, well, as they say, the client is always right. I used the generic "calligraphy" font as a label placeholder on an early draft and they loved it and insisted it be the font for the map. At least I lovingly hand kerned many of the letter-pairs...

I used the pencil tool for the coastlines and rivers, but used the pen tool to trace the route from the re-projection, at a high zoom level, which let me honour the path's accuracy while minimizing the points.

-Rob A>

[dangerdog15]

Nice! I've had to sacrifice artistic ideas for clients before, so I know what you mean. Great work with the kerning! Not too many people are familiar with the term.

[Lukc]

A fantastic map. Well done!

Once you learn to kern,
you will never burn.

[cereth]

A wonderful map. I love the shorelines/shallows.

[ravells]

I love the projection you've used. My heart goes out to you on the font choice!

[Robulous]

Love it, what an amazing journey! I've swum the Mekong in Laos too, fairly terrifying experience! Can you link us to more info about this?

[RobA]

Love it, what an amazing journey! I've swum the Mekong in Laos too, fairly terrifying experience! Can you link us to more info about this?

www.expedition360.com is the old site set up to follow the trip. There will be a new site soon supporting the new books...

-Rob A>

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