Mosaic Map
Marion left a comment which I never replied to, ‘Dimension: Wonder! everywhere’. So I decided I would explain a little further here.
My brief was to depict the village feel in an urban metropolis highlighting the many green spaces in the area, and if possible the cultural highlights, and as Marion points out the distinctive local character and businesses. My initial design included the names of some of these shops to highlight this small pocket where global chains, high street branding has not been able to take hold. It was decided by a local steering committee to omit specific business names, probably due to decisions about who do you favour and who who do you leave out. But the unusual pub names were allowed to remain in the design.
I forget exactly without checking but the map is approx 8-9m long and 30cm high, in three sections. It is both a linear tour of the Nunhead area and a ‘you are here’ navigation aid which will be permantly sited at Nunhead Station.
The ‘you are here’ navigational aid is a strange one as it does provide quite accurate local information. But it reminds me of an Eric Morcambe joke about ‘all the right notes, but not nessacerily in the right order!’. As you can imagine to depict an area in a very linear format distortions are required and changes of scale sweep through the design.
Selection and ommission is often a compositional decision as this has to be a very edited map. The fact that it is only 30cms wide proved to be a hudge design challenge to be able to make this in mosaic as intricate lettering can be painted easily enough, but the letters in mosaic…..hang on…is that really achievable at 30cms wide?….I soon realised that lower case letters were impossible on that scale, too many curves. Economy is everything and stright lines are favourite as readabilty is essential. I think being able to read the text on this map is one of reasons it is engaging. It crossed my mind that writing in history may well have been adapted to suit the materials that were used to produce it. Cuniform and wooden wedges in clay, and possibly imperial roman capitals might have been developed due to the carving requirements, these might be examples of this? Same with my mosaic capitals, I have needed to create a formulaic system to create each letter (and remember its not just the letter shape, just as important is the background behind the letter). This has resulted in a ‘condensed mosaic capital’ font style.
Wales is underwater, so I am unable to progress with my other lettering project. But my job in Winchester (see project blog)http://winnalmoors.wordpress.com/ is in an intensive phase so time in the cooler is intermitant.
