Full page maps for books - important specs to have in attention

[jbgibson]

Is there a rule of thumb on detail - like “don’t go over a couple of dozen named features on one book-page map”? Should there be a sense of, like in the writing itself, “ruthlessly prune away that which doesn’t contribute to/ pertain to the story”?

[TaniaGomesArt]

Is there a rule of thumb on detail - like “don’t go over a couple of dozen named features on one book-page map”? Should there be a sense of, like in the writing itself, “ruthlessly prune away that which doesn’t contribute to/ pertain to the story”?

Ahahahah, you just made me laugh with the way you said the last part.

I believe that should be a rule, yes, but to be honest, when making commissions, it can be hard to convince clients to take some info out of the map. They tend to think that everything is important to the story.

But whenever I look at a map sketch and clearly see that they just have too many named stuff, I have serious talk. Normally you just need to say "to put all this names plus the terrain features on the map I have to make the text so small that on the book no one will be able to read". Most clients take this very seriously and immediately comply with you, simplifying things.

If we are seeing things from a layout design point of view, anything that's on a page should be easy to read/see, so in a sense, yes, there is that rule of tumbs. Finding the balance between a beautiful map illustration and a good design is sometimes hard but, to me, since I work on both areas, is in that balance that the secret is But yeah, sometimes you will end up doing what the client wants... or refusing the job.