Ogilby—the infographic traveller

The type designer Jon Melton retraces the letterforms and infographic wayfinding systems that were etched into the first Road Atlas of Britain via the production of a new Typeface that embodies the cartographic forms of the 17th Century. A journey that takes us through the intrepid landscape of debt, destruction, ill-gotten gain, sycophancy, plague and plagiarism—that is the life of John Ogilby – Cosmographer Royal. This historical and archival research is informing the digital production of a new full typeface called Ogilby's Britannia from primary source original engravings and publications which will be developed into a commercially available font for REF28. Research Question(s): How innovative were Ogilby's linear strip maps and how were they produced? Should John Ogilby be identified as a progenitor of Info-Data Graphics, with his revolutionary Britannia Atlas road strip maps - being the precursor to the Sat-Nav UX/UI interface? Can a sixteenth-century map-engraver's vernacular letterform be identified for revival via historically informed practice-based font design?