Recoloring the Desert

I haven't worked on any maps in ages ... that's because back in December, I downloaded Microsoft Office 365, which it turns out is a ram hog of the first order.  It was effectively impossible to do any real work on large publisher files; apparently, Microsoft hates anything larger than a post-card, or ~ it could be ~ it insists everyone must spend $8,000 on a computer.  I've spent a year looking for a solution to this, reading endless accounts of other people complaining the Publisher runs like a frog with one leg on a Texas Highway in August, even though they've bought systems four and eight times as powerful as mine.

So, recently, I gave up.  I have obtained a copy of Office 2007 and, surprise surprise, Publisher works perfectly on it.

Prior to the hiatus, I was steadily redesigning maps, giving the more color and detailing parts of maps that were less civilized, primarily adding ice caps and swamplands.  Apparently the last time I posted about maps was in July of 2017.  Wow.

So, I'm working on my first desert; an area between the Aral Sea (old world boundaries, before it dried up) and the Caspian.  Here's an image of what the map used to look like depicting the area:

All the necessary information is there, but the it isn't exactly beautiful.  The empty hexes are all colored yellow (for dry steppe), orangish pink (for semi-desert) and grey (for full desert).

My idea for a map scheme has been to soften the lines; leave the hexes in place, but reduce the visual effect of the hexes for a more appealing, less rigid map design, while the hex color is reduced to the back ground.

I was fighting with the problem when my old computer began to suffer problems and then didn't pick it up while this new one couldn't manage the process with Office 365.  Now, poking at it for a week, here and there, relaxing after work, here's an example of the new color scheme for the same region:

Much better, I think.  More appealing to the eye, more colorful, and yet retaining all the information from the previous version.  I'll be using this color scheme as I continue to rework maps over the next year, along with adjustments to swamp (as around Astrakhan on the left) and deserts, while changing the names from Times New Roman to Garamond.  It's a relaxing process; I often do it while watching a movie or other entertainment.