Thanks all for the continued feedback.
@Hai-Etlik, your info on projections is much appreciated. I probably should have been a little more descriptive of this as a 'base map'. Basically yes, I will be using this as the foundation in some other maps I'm going to be doing but I doubt I will actually use this in its current projection, mostly for the reasons you mentioned. Equirectangular projection is kinda boring artistically, but for a base it is, as you said, the easiest to understand and implement, especially when you're not designing with digital heightmap data.
I chose to go for this quasi-photorealistic style because it will warp well, whereas vector symbols would not. Admittedly, some distortion is inevitable but since the majority of my landmass is away from the poles the distortion will be minimized when I start actually projecting my basemap into the styles I plan to use. Fortunately I am still at the point where I can go back and make some changes if the distortion is particularly noticeable. Also, I should be able to incorporate any natural terrain features, as well as a lot of line data (like roads or even political boundaries, so long as the lines are crisp) into the basemap before projection.
Yeah, the compass rose will definitely have to go. Are there any projections in which directional preservation actually occurs? Since, at least to start, I'll be doing some modern-style maps, are there any projections you can suggest or suggest to stay away from? A lot of atlases I see nowadays seem to prefer one of the Wagner projections (VII is one of my personal favorites). I know many moons ago when I was in grade school it seemed everything was Goode Homolosine Interrupted and before that everything was Mercator, Mercator, Mercator (no Virginia, Greenland is not bigger than South America).
I'm using G Projector, which to date is the best map projection utility I've found out there in terms of different styles, assuming of course you've got an equirectangular map to start from. I know there are some other programs out there, but this has been particularly good for me since I'm running a mac and it seems to have a good ability not to choke on really large files.
Here's a quick-and-dirty rendering of my world in Wagner VII format:
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