Map analysis of Erwin Raisz's Vegetation Map of Modern Palestine
Erwin Raisz's use of physiographic symbols to represent terrain made for accessible maps. Here is a map he produced for the book Plants of the Bible
Note how he combines vegetation patterns with landform symbols to produce an informative map.
You can see even more in this enlarged version. Notice the squares representing agriculture...
And he wasn't above including vignettes...
Notice the function of the title and vignette. He uses the negative space of the Mediterranean Sea to draw attention to the title. But he makes the title very heavy and large to give it more weight than the landform, thus causing the viewer to return back to the land.
The viewer is drawn down the land form, heading towards Egypt. But rather than leave the viewer hanging, Raisz includes a nice tasteful vignette as a visual stop. This stop moves the viewer back through the map.
The upper-right corner has the label lava plateau as a visual stop in negative space. He visually tells the viewer "nothing more here is of interest for this map's purpose" and moves the viewer back down. This area also balances the negative space of the upper-left corner.
Finally, the entire right side is kept sparse to balance negative space and retain focus on Palestine. The viewer should never be left thinking "I wonder what's beyond there?"