Travel Infographs

I have been working on a series of small infographs to go along with my project. I took a break from my book to do something a little different and more interesting to myself. Now I am thinking that I will add these into my book. I think it would be nice to have a mix of my imagery of the maps and these infographs that play off of the small books I had created.

Here is what I have come up with so far:

Map Book

I have been trying to find a balance of clean and rough for my book. Here are some spreads I have. I plan on using actual pins instead of the fake ones I've created. Those are just place holders.

Map Translation Book

I am in the process of putting together a book that describes my travels and project into more detail. The images below are where I am at right now. So far I have just been playing with the layouts of the table of contents, introduction, locations, and location explanations. The places that have a dashed line, I am considering sewing a line, scanning it in and using it as a image but I am not sure if this is what I want yet. Also, I want to add more spread such as infographs comparing the trips.

Mainly, I am trying to find a good balance between my handmade maps against graphics/vectors. The pages are 8 x 8 inches to stay with my square theme. I am hoping to get the book printed.

Lateral Relations / Map Translations

Here are some photographs of my space for the show last week:

Second Step of Map Translations

I have been working on building the cubes (with the help of my talented father) for the second step of the map translations. I have them almost finished, just have to sand and then figure out the threading and hanging. They are about 5.5 x 5.5 inches. I think I'll either use a black, tan, or white thread - leaning towards the white to have a relationship with the first maps.

I began by making a mock-up with some scrap wood to get the dimensions right and to make sure everything would go smoothly the way I pictured it in my head.

Here's some photographs of my process:

First Map Step of Map Translations (update 3)

I have been working on perfecting my first maps. The first thing I did on my new maps, was change the size. I put it into a square so it can relate better to the following translations since all of those are squares. Then, thinking about the typography, I decided I liked it hand-written better than printed out. The only problem that came with this is how to write on black paper. I searched for pens with white ink and found a few - luckily one worked well. I think have a reached a point were I feel happy with the results. I moved on and created one of my walking maps to see how it worked in comparison to the driving map I started with. I think that they have a nice range of similarities and differences. My next step will be to create a map of a flight.

First Step of Map Translations (Update 2)

Here is another possible version for my first map.

First Step of Map Translations (update)

I started to feel unsure about the transparent sheet on top and started to really enjoy the sewing part of the previous map I had made. I changed the colors up as well. The old ones felt too much like a children's map. Not sure how I feel about the type yet - still looking for a better solution.

First Step of Map Translations

I have gone back to the first step of my process of translations to how I would like to original maps to look. Instead of using an already made map to show the original paths, I am using some hand drawn illustrations I have from mapping out my trips. Below are some variations I created from the driving map from Beverly, MA to Gorham, ME to Freeport, ME. The first photograph is where I started and after input there were a few things to think about. There was the idea of different colored states, sewing the line of the states to divide them, and then making the path pop out more. I took all into consideration and came up with the second variation shown. I chose not to change the path because this is supposed to be a two-dimensional map and I didn't want to create too many layers. It should be kept on the flatter side. After creating this one, I am not sure how I feel about the different colored states. I think that they come off as cliche - this could be because of my color choices and sticking to typical map colors though. Maybe that is something I can play with further if I chose to do different colors. Right now, I enjoy the one color better but I did enjoy how the sewing turned out for the state lines.

Fourth Translation

This is a rough draft of what the next step would be after the stringed canvas which I am still resolving. For this I traced the shapes of the shadows created by the strings. If you now take a look back and compare it to the cube I had done at the beginning of my process, you can see some of the mistranslations happening. These mishaps relate back to the fact maps can not give us the physical and emotional connect with have to our world.

Map Translations

Last semester I started to work with the senses and how we use them to react to the world around us. I thought about the senses connecting to our language and how there is some forms of disconnect there. By the end of the semester, I was creating three-dimensional cubes that were based off maps of walks I took in different places/cities. Maps are a form of communication we use to show and understand our surroundings. They take our physical three- dimensional world and translate it to a two-dimensional form. Through my project I was to show the translations back and forth between the two and the abstraction that occurs.

Proposal:

Map Translations

The physical world around us has been taken from three-dimensional and transformed to two-dimensional forms for people to better understand our surroundings. Maps help us get from one place to another by creating negative and positive space that shows the ins and outs of the environment. I am interested in translating these maps back and forth between three-dimensional and two-dimensional. Through this I hope to gain an understanding of our relationship to our world by pulling away from the original context of the maps and moving towards abstractions. The visual experiments I go through in the process will work with positive and negative relationships to relate back to the maps.

This piece that I have started creating shown above was moving from the last pieces I had created last semester that were two-dimensional forms of the cubes. This piece is bringing it back to three-dimensional and playing with the positive and negative space of the shadows created by the strings. Some issues that have occurred with is that it is coming off looking too visually heavy. Some solutions that have come up are: removing the canvas, using smaller eye screws, using thicker string to balance the heaviness, just screwing the eye screws into the wall and stringing it on there. I will continue playing with this to see where it can go. The following step after would be finding the shapes the shadows create and translating it back to two-dimensional.