Week 27

This week I kept working on designs for my framed map project. I finished up the design of the map itself at the start of the week. After making sure everything was all set I lasercut the map in cardboard. Once I finished that I realized that I needed to change some things. Some of the parts were too close together. In the middle of the map there is a river that has a lot of islands in it. On the lasercut it seems like the islands clutter it too much and make it hard to cut so I got rid of them and made the river a little bit wider. I also took away the coordinates at the bottom and left just the name of the town because it was too cluttered and close together which caused some issues when lasercutting.

Old map

New map

Throughout the week I was also working on figuring out how I wanted to make the frame of the map and mainly how I was going to keep the map itself inside the frame. I went through a couple of different ideas and designs. Eventually I settled on incorporating a clear piece of acrylic in the frame to keep the map inside. The design consists of a front frame, the clear acrylic layer, the map which is surrounded by a second frame and a back plate to hold it in place.

One of the first frames I designed

The latest frame I designed and plan on using