Maproom

Editable & interactive maps

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  • Britain & Ireland maps
    • Britain and Ireland
    • UK - United Kingdom
    • Ireland
    • England
    • Scotland
    • Wales
    • Northern Ireland
    • Isle of Man
    • Channel Islands
  • ONS & admin maps
    • Office for National Statistics (ONS) maps
    • Local authority maps
    • County maps
  • Postcode maps
    • Overview
    • Downloadable postcode maps
    • Dynamic postcode maps - deep zoom - search - colouring tools - data feed
  • City maps
    • Birmingham
    • Brighton
    • Bristol
    • Cardiff
    • Edinburgh
    • Glasgow
    • Liverpool
    • London
    • Manchester
    • New York
    • Oxford
  • World maps
    • World maps
    • Europe maps
    • Map of EU countries after Brexit
    • Maps of France
    • Maps of Germany
    • Maps of New York and environs
  • Dynamic maps
    • Introduction and showcase
    • Dynamic maps for UK governance, business intelligence and marketing
    • Subscription options
  • Bespoke mapping

General Advice About Vector Artwork

  • How to edit the downloadable maps
  • Editing colours
  • Scaling recommendations
  • Dealing with text
  • About hillshading layers
  • Outputting for websites or apps
  • Outputting for print

Illustrator Tutorials

  • Understanding the map layers
  • Special option layers
  • Advanced editing of strokes in Illustrator
  • Video – How to use the map layers in Illustrator
  • Video – how to change map colours in Illustrator

Photoshop Tutorials

  • How to change the colour of a hillshading / relief layer in Photoshop

Customisation service

We offer a range of services if you need help to customise your map. Our rates are competitive and we will waive the price of the base map itself if you have already purchased one.

See bespoke services

Dealing with text

If your map has text on it, or you want to add some text, first work out what size you need to output the map at, and how big the text needs to be in order to be legible. This usually takes a few experiments outputting to PDF or JPG and printing out to a desktop printer or uploading to the internet at different sizes so you can see for yourself if the text size needs to be bumped up or reduced.

To add place names, the easiest solution is usually to copy an existing place name and marker with all its styling, change the wording and, staying on the same layer, move the new place name with marker into position.

Handling fonts and text size changes

Due to font licensing restrictions we can use only universal fonts such as Helvetica, Times and Trebuchet in the live vector maps we supply to customers. Many designers will want to replace these with their own licensed fonts, and we have made it easy for you to do this by creating paragraph styles at different scales, and by positioning place names carefully to keep reflow to a minimum after font substitution.

Tweaking the position of place names can be a time-consuming part of mapmaking. The paragraph styles we have created and initial positioning help to minimise this task for you.

  • Standard royalty free terms for downloadable maps
  • Licensing terms for downloadable postcode maps
  • How to edit the downloadable maps
  • Subscription options for dynamic online maps
  • Pricing & refund policies
  • Privacy & cookies

All content © Maproom at Thameside Media · Award winning media projects