Research
Google Maps University Area
Exercises/ Activities
Writing
Our directions to get to the destination including sensory details
Pictures
Pictures of our journey from Hayes to the destination
Final map
Iterations and Production
We started with a scavenger hunt leading to the map room at Thompson Library. I enjoyed this exercise because I like scavenger hunts and it was fun to follow the clues without any visual hints. When I and my group finally found the map room, we took pictures of what looked interesting to us, and here is where I got my idea started for what I wanted my map to look like. I liked the old maps with pictures of dragons and such, filled with color. I knew my map wouldn’t be this big, but I still liked the idea. After that, I found some county maps, and my vision got refined down to a smaller scale. In another book about the history of New York, I read about the revolution in the Hamilton period and as they were describing the order of events, they had a small little map of the peninsula with paths leading over and around it to show where each army and battle was located. I noticed small details, like the simple tree symbols and condensed squares to represent small towns. I liked these small symbols and I knew that I wanted something like that map in New York.
The next exercise we did was instructional drawing. We made specific steps and symbols to help the drawer reconstruct Sponge-bobs house. these instructions were so specific, as they included inch measurements and angles of lines. I didn’t want my directions to follow the specificity of this exercise so I dumbed down my instruction to strictly sensory words, nothing like “take 3 steps back” because that is unnecessary to me. This instructional drawing exercise was enjoyable too. When we traded with other groups we got good feedback on how we should be more specific with the placement and location of the symbols. I liked how we were being tested to do things without seeing them, only words.
The texture exercise was one of my favorites because I liked drawing small things with high detail so they look as realistic as possible. This helped me visually see the difference and the change from complete black shadow to pure white and better understand values. This kind of helped me with experimenting with different textures like if I wanted to add shadows in my map or texture to the grass. I decided not to do any of that but this was still fun.
After all that, I finally began the process of making my map. I chose my location and how wide I was making the boundaries and from that point, I knew this was going to be a long process for me. My area was very large and it would be really hard to just look at it then try to recreate it directly on the paper with no grid or anything. I’ve always been good at digitized recreations so I thought that would be a good place to start. For my area, I chose to focus on the oval and north oval and cut it off around Neil Ave, W 12th Ave, College Road S, and Annie and John Glenn Ave. These cutoff roads created a nice rectangular shape for my map and it was pleasing to my eye.
This was the process of recreating the map digitally before transferring onto the paper. My original plan was to copy this part of the map that I wanted, including all the detail of each building and the shape of each tree, not simplifying anything. From there I was going to find a way to scale it up to the size of my 17 x 14 paper and use the light table to trace it from there. Doing this, I avoided the possibility of mistake or misplacement of any buildings or alteration to my map. My title, key, and directions were all last-minute thoughts to the map.
Once I finished my final digital map, I chose some banners and borders to try and set a theme for my paper. I switched the middle of each oval into a compass because, in my directions, I refer to the oval as a compass because of all the paths that emerge from one point, the point of the compass. I liked the idea of a subtle compass theme, maybe old tarnished nautical vibes. From that, I looked for an old ripped paper template, the kind you would find a treasure map on, and I wanted my key to be on that.
Since I was still working digitally, I shaped and scaled this paper until it was in the size and location I wanted it to be and copied a similar version overtop that would soon be on the final paper. My title was just written on a simple banner because I didn’t want to overcomplicate things. I also played around with some fonts until I found some that matched my nautical theme. I didn’t finish the entire map digitally, I left some blank space for my directions and to figure that out on paper. I had a small thought for the directions and I liked the idea of rope to match the theme so you can see how I manipulated that to fit in the final.
I did have some trouble trying to scale the map from digital to paper because I didn’t know the original scale of the digital board and I couldn’t compare it to the 17×14. I had to move my project to Illustrator from Sketchbook because Sketchbook doesn’t do measurements. I learned from Illustrator the size of my board and I scaled it from there and I just had to divide the board into sections that equal the size of a piece of printer paper. I ended up with 3 papers, horizontally and vertically and I transferred that to a printer nearby and once I had the pages, I matched them up to make sure they were perfect. There was a slight alteration where the bottom block of the map was too long and didn’t match up with the top of the map. I don’t know how this happened but I just cut a sliver out from the middle and forced it to match up again. I also give myself room to overlap each page to get the most accurate tracing. For the actual tracing, I used a 0.3 point pen for the buildings and 0.5 for the trees.
Transferring digital map onto 17×14 Bristol paper
I was met with frustration when I discovered we could only use one color because I really like bright colors and combining them to create a tone or mood. I didn’t accept this to I decided to challenge this restriction by making a proposal. If I chose one color, like beige, and darkened it using only the white and black slider, nothing else changed, I would make brown. If I did the same thing but lightened it, I would make a light cream color. So, technically, I still used the same color to make two new colors. I brought my proposition to Taylor and basically annoyed him into submission where he allowed me to use these alterations of one color. I was very excited about my success and I went to work right away because I had so many more opportunities to experiment.
My original plan was to use colored pencils in brown scale but I didn’t have those so I used watercolors instead. This was actually better because they weren’t super opaque and you could still see the outlines of the trees underneath the color. I did overlap in some places so I did have to redraw some lines but nothing unexpected. In the end, I’m really glad I chose beige as my color because I am obsessed with brown and it matched my theme close enough, especially when coloring the key paper, which worked much better than I expected. I also didn’t want to be basic and choose green because I knew everyone else was choosing either green for the grass or red for the trail. My piece definitely stands out, just as I intended. In the end, I love what I did and I’m glad I put so much time into this because it was definitely worth it. If I had more time to improve, I may have been more precise when painting, making sure to stay inside the outlines to avoid having to fix it later. I maybe would have used a different color of paper but I wasn’t 100% on my brown color theme until about halfway through, and after that came the nautical theme. I maybe could’ve soaked my Bristol paper in some coffee water to tint it beige, making it look older, and I could’ve burnt and torn some edges to make it look like a pirates map like some other people did. Still, I love my final.
