Saturday, May 23, 2009

Helpful How To Customize Clip Art Maps Video Tips

Thank you for the comment,

"Thanks, World of Maps for the video tips. I am in the process of adding names of cities to our maps and this is very helpful. I am pleased with the map program. Our salesmen have also appreciated the crispness of the finished product as opposed to the hand colored maps that were done in the past."

We now have all of our How To Edit and Customize video tips up online. You can check them out in our FAQ section http://www.bjdesign.com/html/questions.html

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Copyright and Using Clip Art Maps in a Book

Customer Question
I work for a Korean publishing company and would like to use one of your maps in our book. Does ordering the CD-Rom map for $199.95 clear all the copyrights problem? Is there a need to credit the map in usage? Also, can we use your map again later in other publications as well, or are we supposed to contact you for each usage? It'll be very helpful if you can let us know about these questions. Thank you!

bjdesign.com World of Maps Answer
Thank you for your visit and for your question. Our maps are used all the time in publications, book, magazine, etc. The maps are royalty free and you can use them in your publications today and tomorrow and into the future as much as you want. You do not need to give any credit and we do not need to be notified and there are no additional payments for usage. The maps are fully editable in Adobe Illustrator and PowerPoint, we also just completed latest upgrade, version 8.0 with 40+ new country maps and many other updates so there is a lot to choose from for your projects. Send us a link when you are done with your project, we would love to see the end result.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Setting Up A Clickable Map on a Web Site

Customer Question
I am building a web site that needs a USA map that once a state is clicked on counties show up, then I need to click on a county and have a page showing suppliers to show up. Do you have a map that will let me do this?

World of Maps Answer
Thank you for your question. The basic answer is yes. We have all of the map elements needed to build a drill down map. Starting with the top level USA maps and then each state or county to follow up. One of the ways to build this on your site is to make an image map with hot zones. This is usually done using your web authoring program. You would highlight with a tool the outer edge of each state and then assign it a link. The link then goes to a new page with the new information. You can see all of our maps at www.bjdesign.com

The other way people do this is with Flash, which is an animation program from Adobe. Our illustrator maps will work with Flash. There are also some good companies out there you could look at that have developed packages for this, you might want to check them out. http://www.flashmaps.com, http://www.flashimap.com/ and http://www.maps4.com/index.html.

I am not sure which way you are going. We have nice collection of illustrator maps that can be easily customized if you are going in the image map method, and if you know Flash then I would look at the companies above.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Please Buy Maps on Our Subscription Site, www.bjdesign.com

For the time being please purchase our maps on our subscription/download site, www.bjdesign.com. We are doing some upgrades on www.mapsfordesign.com and it is temporally off line. www.bjdesign.com is our subscription site and offers unlimited access and downloads of our editable clip art for a year for one price of everything that is on the site. What you download is yours to keep. It is a great deal if you need more than 2 or 3 maps. We also sell the CD Rom there. The CD Rom gives you a complete back up of the entire collection plus many additional maps plus you get full access to our download collections so you can start your project right away. And as always the CD shipping is no charge for anywhere in the world.

Same great maps, two ways to buy.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Selecting Little Individule Countries in Our World Maps

We were just asked a question about selecting some of the little tiny countries in our world maps so that they can be colored.

Answer. The easiest way is to use the zoom feature of PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator, 300% seems to work pretty well. Zoom in and select with the a click of your pointer. Once selected the country can be colored or changed

If you are using a map with names on it, it is often easiest to just move the name out of the way and then select the country with your pointer.

And a third way is to drag your pointer over or around the country. Holding down the mouse button and drag around the country your want to select. You will see dotted lines appear on the screen and this tells you that what is inside of them will be selected. In PowerPoint you have to go all around the object to select it, but if you just cross over border nothing will happen. In Illustrator an object will be selected if any part of the dragging mouse pointer goes over the edge.

For more information be sure to check out our How to Instructional Videos at MapsforDesign.com

New World Projection Map Add to the Collection


One of the new maps we have add in our recent World of Maps upgrade is a Mercator projection with individual countries and their names. This has been a very popular map with our PowerPoint users. Anyone doing a presentation where they have to show international offices or plotting data, this is the map. We also have a matching Adobe Illustrator version that has all the same features. The maps are completely editable and all elements can be changed, moved, put into new groups, text added and a question we are often asked, can they be deleted, the answer is yes.