I will try to explain my thought process with the labels.

As I have said before this is a player handout for my D&D game. based on experience with my players and other (horrible) sketch maps I made for them, I noticed that they routinely confused, forgot, or lost unlabeled terrain features (mountain ranges, forests, lakes...). from a worldbuilding/story standpoint these features are important and I want to reduce the problems they were having with previous maps. thus my jumping headlong into this hobby to make better maps (and labeling). while working on it I got the idea of using the labels to suggest the size of the feature relative to other labeled things, and I wanted them a separate color so at a glance my players could identify them and get a sense of the scale. now I'm starting to get the feeling that I might be going about this the wrong way and it's most likely %50 of my problem. in all honesty, I'm not happy with the "glow" behind the text to contrast it, I have tried some with just outlining the text and not liked the results mostly because I will find a color combination that will work in the forest and not the desert and I have been trying to keep things uniform. it feels like all my label attempts are text with a map background, if that makes sense. I'm going to try a knockout background next. and my brother suggested I try to make it look like the icons and labels are a separate piece of paper/parchment/canvas that was stuck or glued onto the finished map.

TLDR: I'm trying to solve a problem my players are having by labeling everything.

I'm also looking for critique on things like the icons, key, compass rose, roads, shipping lanes, border, and nameplate.
Thank you, everyone, for all the advice it has helped me improve in this hobby as my progression of this map has shown I hope.