While researching map design, I came across the fascinating Cartographers’ Guild and, on a whim, decided to enter their mapping challenge for May 2014: to design a map that monsters might have created. This is what I came up with:

The concept is pretty basic: A primitive tribe of monstrous folk live in the mountains and prey on several surrounding human communities for their food and supplies. They don’t have a well developed written language, so they’ve marked points of interest on their maps using pictograms and other symbols. It’s like a hobo code. They’re mostly interested in food and threats, so the symbols include bread and livestock (farmers), fish, villages and cities etc. They also mark on weapons to indicate how dangerous the people are in those areas.

It’s a small map because they travel by foot and this is basically their whole world and it lacks sophistication because they do.

Update: I’m happy to report that my map won this particular challenge!