Probably a super-basic question, but does anyone have advice for inserting text legibly onto a map? Specific font recommendations or anything?
You want your text to be as large and as simple as possible. Often people think fancy map = fancy text but you want the opposite. Text should be read without being noticed. You want immersion in the map first. In my IRL work (as a cartographer) I use fonts mostly from Google Fonts:
https://fonts.google.com/. Merriweather, Lato, Roboto and Bitter are all good choices.
Try to follow a series of thoughts when placing text. First, know what you
dont need to label. Anything you dont need text on, is more space to make the text you do have more legible. If you have a map with a lot of provinces, dont say "province of..." 15 times. Just use the name, for example. You don't need a legend entry for what mountains are. Assume your audience has a general understanding of what ...things, should look like and you'll rarely go wrong. No need to sacrifice good design out of worries you'll alienate some mythical idiot reading your map.
Then, place your text in the most open areas you have. Or, alternatively, where they are most central in the feature they describe.
Then, size your text to fill up as much space as possible without being so large it covers the thing its supposed to describe.
Then, color it. Black, White, or a slight off-shade of either. No need to get terribly fancy unless you have lots of differently colored features that you want to accentuate in contrast to each other. For stuff like labelling mountain ranges, oceans, roads, etc. keep it basic.
Then, highlight it. A very moderate drop shadow / a light outer glow around your text does wonders.
For stuff like legends, titles, descriptions, all the same rules apply. Focus on readability, always, above everything else. If someone can't read something, they won't care much how fancy the letters are. And really crazy fonts 99% of the time look like shit anyways.
Hope this helps!