Customer Question: I have a subscription to your editable World of Maps collection and I work with the US State and the World Country maps a lot. One of the challenges I have is adding cities in geographically correct locations – especially as it relates to a country. It is a tedious process, do you have any ideas or methods to help me do it quicker.
Answer: Great question, one of the ideas we had when building our maps was to keep them pretty simple, to make them basic outline maps that are easy to customize for the wide variety of uses people have. Our maps aren’t set up with any database abilities but PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator are powerful programs and you can add whatever you need.
The basic way to do would be to find a regular State or Country map that already has the cities you are looking for on it. The best place to find this is Google Maps or Google Images. Google Images is one of the navigation button on the main Google screen, you can search on the map in question. Hundreds will come up. I look for a map that is 50K or more in size and save it to my computer.
This map is then brought into PowerPoint or Illustrator using the Insert or Place commands and is sized and turned to approximately fit the outline of your existing state. You are basically use the image from Google as a template to locate your cities. You can use the shapes or drawing tools to draw small city dots and you can place them over the cities on the map graphic. Add city names, when finished delete the state or country graphic. Once you get the hang of it the process moves pretty quickly.
Don't forget, blog readers get a special 20% discount on our Maps for Design editable PowerPoint and Illustrator maps, any number of maps, any item, including the CDs, simply enter the coupon code: "MapBlog" during checkout to receive. Discount good till 12/31/2009.
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