1886 Map of Auralia

[cantab]

I can't fault anything about this map.

[Surveyor]

Coyotemax

yow, that looks it was scanned from one of the atlases I used back in grade school

That was my intention and I also remember those atlases used in school in the late 50's and early 60's.
Ascension and Cantab thank you for your comments!
It was a nice project and I have learned a lot.

[zbeeblebrox]

That's really convincing. How did you simulate the aged print? It looks like all the locations were placed on the page with an old press.

[Coyotemax]

My first thought had been that the text looked a little more blurry than I would expect, but then I thought back and I think it's actually pretty close, especially if it was cheap ink that was used (mass produced school atlases for the win!). What really sold it for me was 2 things - the fonts themselves, those are TOTALLY authentic looking, and the way there's so much stuff crammed onto the page, everything overlapping each other. that more than anything prompted the atlas comment.

I know I commented already but I couldn't help saying something again, I found myself thinking about this map at the oddest times today while I was at work. It left a surprising impression on me..

[tilt]

nice going... a little to blurry in my opinion but cool project

[Surveyor]

Coyotemax The font I used was Century Schoolbook, this font I found was used in other stuff of that era and it is characterised by the deep curly tongue on the Capital R slope. You are right about the fuzziness of the font. I deliberately put a small blur on all the fonts to emulate the lousy printing that was done in those cheap atlases and maps of that era.
I tried to put in more info ( marsh and terrain ) but it just became a blurry mess, so I left it out. The printing process of those days was obviously done with separate plates as the mis-registration is often quite evident.

[jbgibson]

"failed to make it an interesting map"... false.
"failed to properly describe map as fascinating" .... truth :-)

I like it.

[gilgamec]

Hmm.... I already commented here, but it seems the site swallowed my post. So:

• It looks great!
• I find that the fonts on old maps aren't so much fuzzy as inconsistent. I think it's because the ink used to print them blobs up, so two strokes which should be the same are wildly different. Look at the northwest corner of the original map: the ascenders in the E in Edenhope and the H in Harrow should be the same width, but the former is at least twice as thick as the latter. The horizontal line in the first e in "Tea Tree L." is completely missing!
• But it still looks great!
• That said, the fuzziness might work in your map if it wasn't so inconsistent itself. Look, for instance, at "Warrabool" versus "Warrabool Bay"; the former is much darker than the latter! This is the biggest problem I have with your map: on old maps, the black text is in the same color of ink, so you don't get one bit of text less dark than another.
• It looks great! How did you do the shading in the ocean? On my own attempt to create a map of about the same era (here), that was my biggest problem.

I think that was everything. (Phew!)

[RevGunn]

This is an awesome map! I'm doing something similar, I just went a different way. As far as halftones, yes, I've seen North American maps form as early as 1850 with halftones on them in my research. Really hard to read on a monitor sometimes. I like it.