ENTICE: A journey into Substack wizardry
Spotlight: Cosmographia’s About Page
"God is in the details."
— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
In a movie scene, a child opens a book and suddenly the room fills with light and fantasy creatures lift her into a magical world. The journey begins.
In the bits and bytes world of Substack,
whisks us from our keyboards and screens onto a journey to the faraway. The About Page is a portal … an invitation to adventure wafting scents of Tolkien and dusty, secret maps.The call to action is to explore, wondering: Who lived there? What were they like? What did they do?
Inspired by “the magnum opus of Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), one of the most influential cartographers in history,” M. E. Rothwell breaks the flat boundaries of Substack to “map the myriad corners of our planet not through geographic outlines, but via travelogue, history, and the arts. A sort of ultra cartography.”
Rothwell is a world builder, however, not a fantasy world builder such as Tolkien, but an architect of journeys into real, enchanted worlds largely unseen by tourists.
On this excursion, highlighted on the Cosmographia About Page, we meet an artist of the lake, hear a poet’s longing question about the lake, find the travel map of an English woman explorer seeking a rumored cure for leprosy, read about the journey of a Nobel Peace Prize winner as he sought a new trade route, and see stunning photos of the lake.
Suddenly, in the space of one post, a small place on the planet lights up as we meet Lake Baikal. Through the alchemy of words and images, art and history, a place most of us will never see becomes a known and treasured part of our world.
M. E. Rothwell is a Substack wizard. He manages to take many interests … travel, art, history, poetry, and weave them into tapestry. Other Substacks will never look like his … nor should they … however, we can learn from him.
The primary take-away, for me, is the vision of a container that holds all the various pieces of what we want to offer readers. Rothwell has carefully crafted the look and feel of Cosmographia, creating a uniquely world-expanding experience for his readers.
The purpose of the Substack Field Guide series is to help all of us writers here in this generous community of writers translate our own visions onto the page and invite our readers into those visions.
Field Guide #2 will be released to paid subscribers on August 23, 2023.
Wow, Joyce - thanks so much for writing these very kind words! I’ve never been described as a wizard before and shall treasure that label for the rest of my days! 😂
I must have been through about 100 variations of my About Page, trying to distil what exactly it is that I want to write about, because as you noticed, the topics could be considered quite diffuse. Same with the design and aesthetic, and even the name Cosmographia is on its second iteration.
Very happy with how it looks now, and it seems to be communicating what I think it is communicating as everything you wrote here is exactly what I want readers to think when they come to my publication for the first time.
I certainly no expert, but it seems trial and error is the way!
This is great, Joyce. I like calling attention to other authors who are doing things right.
Also, just updated my "about" page and still wrestling with it, so: very timely for me!