How to display place names for a map?

[guyanonymous]

I'm trying to decide how best to display the names of countries and capitals on my map.

Being a world map with lots of locales, it would be both a tight fit and unreadable at less than full resolution if I labeled things directly on the map.

I'm thinking of orienting things like so:

_________________________________
| ______________________________ |
| |                            | |
| |                            | |
| |                            | |
| |         map itself         | |
| |         (w coord)          | |
| |                            | |
| |                            | |
| |                            | |
| |____________________________| |
|                                |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|  xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  |
|________________________________|

Where xxxxxxxx is something like "a-b City of Country" (a-b is the coordinates).

Any thoughts? Alternate suggestions? There are ~ 100 countries on the map.

[guyanonymous]

well, I'm giving up trying to get hte spacing to work....silly editor removes/adds spaces...argh.

Think a map at the top of a vertical/square page, with columns below showing the cities/coordinates.

[RobA]

well, I'm giving up trying to get hte spacing to work....silly editor removes/adds spaces...argh.

Fixed your ascii diagram.

-Rob A>

[Chaosorcerer]

Would it be an idea to give every city a number, an then naming those outside the map?
I would find it very irritating to constantly have to look at the x- and y-axis...


Like: (see attachment)

[jfrazierjr]

Another option is to have pointer indexed grids the way many city maps do. So.. you have an index that has information pertaining to the stuff in cell B10 for example. Only good for certain types of maps IMHO, but I wanted to post it as an option.

[RobA]

...or print out a whole series of transparency sheets that you can overlay to show the locations... kind of a map "secret decoder ring"...

(Sorry, had some silly pills this morning...)

-Rob A>

[guyanonymous]

Thanks for the quick responses... (and for fixing my diagram!)

I thought about numbering as well as the coordinate system (think a fold up map that you keep in your car as, I believe jfrazierjr is suggesting) and settled on the second method for how I like to look at maps...but that's not how all people do.

I was thinking that most of the time I might be looking for a specific place on the map by name, as opposed to looking at a point on the map and trying to figure out the name. The coordinate system vs. the numbers on the map system....sigh Trade-offs.

Not quite perfect though is it....I'd have to have two lists below one sorted alphabetically, the other by coordinate....or continent.ooor...[/head exploding]

[Kingbreaker]

If you look at historic maps used for navigation, they just crowd the labels in, legibillity be damned

[guyanonymous]

thanks for the evening's laugh!

[Gamerprinter]

I'm old fashioned I place the nation names and city names right onto their locations on the map. I tend to avoid having too many cities in the nations I map, rather only going for the biggest cities so there should only be a few or just one per nation.

I find cross-referencing between a numbered location to a list of city names as too complicated for me and the viewers to my maps.

As Kingbreaker says, the old maps were this way, why should I be any different. If you look at most atlases, every town, city, county, state, are all labeled right at their locations.

Can it become too crowded? Of course, but I say, "tough, live with it!"

Dungeon maps are different though, in that you don't want a label to get in the way of what your characters see, so I accept those using numbers that are cross referenced to a descriptive list, which makes sense.

For world or regional maps, I say put the label where it belongs.

GP

PS: for an exceptional map done by a pro for a WotC's Cormyr that is labeled the old fashioned way and perhaps "overly" labeled (which was necessary for this commission), check out this map:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3093

I would have done the same thing myself.