Fortune's 1934 Map of Italy

Today’s 'Cover of the Day’ over at Vintage Fortune Magazine is the special issue on Italy and Fascism published in July 1934. But that's not all. VFM’s Linda Rubes posts yet another cover today—the REJECTED one that was first created by illustrator Antonio Petruccelli. Read about that here.

What a perfect opportunity for me to share the fabulous map by L.H. Appleton that ran inside that issue. The map is printed double truck, sideways and uses three colors and black.

Now keep in mind that the size of the magazine was 11”x14”, so the full spread (22” x14”) accommodated an incredible amount of description. Clicking on this map will make it bigger, but really not big enough to read clearly. In order to really read the text you need to see the image at full size. (Another reason for me to get back to writing that book about Fortune’s glorious graphic past—wouldn’t it be awesome to see this reproduced at its original size?)

There are two details you can still make out at this size. One is the little black hand representing the Mafia to left of Sicily, and the other is the mileage scale, bottom right, which has to be one of the best mileage scales ever. To show the width of Italy, Appleton gives us a map of Connecticut indicating that it is 68 miles wide. Now if you consider that Fortune’s subscribers at the time, were wealthy businessmen, the size of Connecticut was probably familiar to most of them!

I promise to run more of Fortune’s amazing infographics very soon.