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A final project

Having printing problems.  Prints on 8.5x11, errors and all.  Not on the larger paper so far.  It's a mystery.

Download atlaspageonefinal.pdf

Download atlaspagetwo.pdf

Download atlaspagethree.pdf

Download atlaspagefour.pdf

So much good stuff...so little space...

Developing content for an atlas presentation is similar to developing content for a museum exhibit.  You need tight themes, economical use of language and images, and a selection of graphics and images in formats best adapted to explaining the content.

Size is an unforeseen issue in trying to work this out for print.  The space is small; maps are big.  While we've looked at the theory of good mapping--color, legends, selective content--the practice, as always, is less intuitive than the critiquing process leads us to believe.

As it stands now, this presentation is a little short on maps and a little long on photos.  Still thinking. 

At the risk of sounding like a digital hypochondriac, it's ALWAYS the basics that get me (first).  When I export the Illustrator files as jpegs, the print area disappears, and the page format sinks marginless against the edges.  However, they do export as PDFs.   Here are mockups of the first three pages; the elements of page four may appear before class... 

atlaspageonefinal.pdf

atlaspagetwo.pdf

atlaspagethree.pdf

Beyond Sanborn...

I learned a bit about industrial geography this week and developed an even greater appreciation for librarians and archivists.  I spent two days at the Library of Virginia (LVA) in the Special Collections and Maps Rooms--a venue staffed with pre-eminent experts in various fields of Virginia history.

One of the items on my list of things to look for was the continued search for interior floor plans of any Tredegar building.  I hadn't found anyone at LVA aware of their location or even whether they existed--mostly it had been possible to figure out where they are not. But the second day of this research trip, an archivist was right there with the likely answer before I even had my stuff in the locker. He'd found out because he'd run into someone at dinner the night before who had worked on restoration of the Tredegar site, and he spent some of their conversation conveying my research request of the day.

Tredegar corporate documents are in one collection at LVA intermingled with family financial records described in an excellent and extensive finding aid.  Nonetheless, research within them is neither linear nor a quick process.  It's the relationship among records, both in the collection and likely in external collections that will provide whatever narrative ensues for the story of Tredegar in the latter part of the nineteeth century.  I spend a lot of time looking at materials that make no sense to me at the time, but come together later as related records surface and as my reading of secondary sources expands.  I spend more time looking at materials that still make no sense to me.

BUT, the great find was blueprints of the site from 1920 that include building sizes, materials, and explain details about railroads, mill races--other elements critical to factory operations.  I would not have recognized their value before this class.

A revisit to the Tredegar site fell into the category of things I didn't know then, but I understand now.  The industrial archaeology of the site is well documented and usefully diagrammed, but the exploration into historical maps provides coherence among the ruins.

So, on to the grids of page layout.