Reading The Map

 

Start Reading Anywhere “Champlain’s journeys cannot be simplified to one starting point and one ending point. He is travelling back and forth over many years, so too must the reader travel back and forth in the map. We designed this map to be entered and exited in many places. If the reader becomes disoriented, the locators embedded in the title provide structure by showing at a glance the extent of travel by year. “-MWPearce and MJHermannFlat: 39 x 59 inches

Below is a diagram of how to group information when looking at the map for the first time:

Reading the Storyboards (1)-(5)

The Cartographers created a series of sequential panels to convey the depth and diversity of experience in places over time. These panels were designed to bring the reader into the storied landscape using different techniques with type, color, and scale, to express isolation, seasonality, danger, despair, death, hope,and survival. Champlain’s voice is quoted directly from his journals (typeset in blue), imagined Native voices respond (in green) and the cartographers’ voice (in black) moves the story along.

Description of the Storyboards

In the sequential insets, directionality is defined by the unfolding of stories in time. Direction can become part of the emotional geography of the story itself. For example, in the sequence from Montreal [Storyboard (3)]. the story is of a drowning in the Lachine Rapids. Shifts in direction, color, and scale between panels are chaotic in order to mimic the chaos and confusion of drowning in rapids.