This Map Spotlight will be showcasing the runner-up of the 2023 Avenza Map Contest: Korea Between the Wars by Nat Case. This map was part of a series of five maps created by Nat to be published in the memoir Beyond the Border: A Korean’s Journey Between the North and South by Tae-hyok Kim and Nicole Kim Rogers, which follows Tae-hyok’s life in war-ridden mid-century Korea. This particular map is used to set the stage for the beginning of his story when North and South Korea were divided by the 38th parallel post-World War II. Hand-drawn map elements and handwriting-style labels are used to highlight relevant cities, provinces and other features of the Korean peninsula and surrounding regions.

Check out the other maps in the series on Nat’s website, and find Beyond the Border: A Korean’s Journey Between the North and South here.

Select the images below to see a detailed look at Nat’s map

Making the Map

Nat used both MAPublisher and Geographic Imager tools in the creation of this map. In MAPublisher, coastline and political boundaries as well as points were imported and then projected and rescaled. Transforming the projection of the data upon import allowed him to set up the map scale and projection of the document without needing to use the MAP View Editor after import. The coastline data was then exported as a TIFF to be used in the process of creating the textured shaded relief.

In Geographic Imager, a Prisma shaded relief was imported and transformed to the desired projection. It was then cropped and exported to a TIFF as well, to also be used in the process of creating the textured shaded relief.

Both TIFF files were then imported into the Illustrator map file. Nat used the grayscale of the Prisma relief as a mask in Illustrator to create the textured relief around the coastlines and land formations. The hand-drawn texture were created using textures from the Adobe Stock library.

Nat selected handwriting fonts when creating the labels using the Label tool to place them initially. He then adjusted the labels manually as desired.

See the winners announcement for the 2023 Avenza Map Contest here, and check out our other Map Spotlight blogs here!