1. Your choice of colors is lovely. They are rich, and somewhat vibrant. This map awakens the eye, when I first load it into view.Originally Posted by Ome
2. As for visual texture, it enhances what is on visual display, here - though for various segments of the map, some additional variety in texture could have visually fleshed things out more.
3. With regard to legibility, I give this map high marks. Very high marks, indeed, particularly where the name of the map and the various pace names are concerned.
4. The map compass is a nice visual touch, one that enhances the map's overall aesthetic appeal.
5. With regard to your text labels, while legibility is high, the map ends up feeling crowded and cramped. This, in turn, imbues the map with more of an amateur quality.
6. The title of the map in the upper right corner, in conjunction with the big letters and the way that they are placed atop the sun/moon combo, and how they adhere with precision to that long, black horizontal line forms one of the best visual elements, taken collectively, of the entire map. That was a particularly wise decision, and command's the eye's gaze.
7. Heavy resort to mountains, and the inclusion of that visually-prominent Enori Swamp, are the real visual jewels of this map. That whirlpool looks nice, but visually, the map feels fairly small - too small for what could have been the grandeur that seemed to be beckoned to. The various scattered location icons yields a haphazard look, especially in the Wailing Dreads region. The only thing that I really like about that entire region is the color, relative to the colors of other nearby regions which border it. For your future cartographic undertakings, I encourage you to work with a bigger canvas.
8. The black external border really works well to lodge this colorful map directly in the eye. It creates a really strong point of visual contrast for the colors of the map to work with. In essence, it helps the map to stand out to the eye all the more.
9. The cloud work in the upper left corner presents a nice bit of visual variety, compared to the land masses and water which swallow the eye's focus.
10. To a large degree your chosen resort to incorporating text within this map strikes me as being substantially unimaginative. There is enormous room for improvement in this area. True, there exists uniformity in your resort to fonts, but the bulk of your text labels are of the straight horizontal variety - and that ends up imbuing this otherwise fairly nice looking map with a degree of generic feel. It is said that variety is the spice of life, and where your text work is concerned, you might want to consider spicing your map up a tad more, the next time around.
All in all, it's an above average looking fantasy map.
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