World of Maps Holiday Gift and Products Shop

We have pulled together some of our more popular Country Maps and turned them into products. This video shows you a quick overview of what we have.



We have been getting a great response from our World of Maps gift and product store this holiday season, the designs include: World of Maps Designs, Canada with Maple Leaf, Canada with Map and Maple Leaf, Germany Map with Flag, England Map with Flag, United Kingdom Map with Flag, Spain Map with Flag, France Map with Flag,  Deutschland Map with Flag

We have tons for items that you can pick up the include:  t-shirts, v-neck t-shirt, long sleeve t-shirts, men and women, fitted t-shirts, toddler t-shirt, sweatshirt, boxes shorts, thong underwear, mouse pad, electric wall clock, journal, throw pillows, keepsake box, framed tile, mug, large mug, apron, Sigg water bottle, dog t-shirt, pet bowl, magnets, calendar, tote bag, messenger bag, gym bag, beach bag

You can visit the store at www.FreeUSandWorldMaps.com

Our Gift and Product Map Store is Up for the Holidays

We are please to announce that we have pulled together all of our map and flag designs into a collection of gift products for the holidays. With maps and flags of Spain, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and England on all kinds of products from t-shirts, to mugs, pillows, aprons, notebooks, mouse pads there is a gift for him, her, friends and family. Our products are made by Cafepress so you know the quality is great and they handle all the shipping.

Hope you get a chance to visit our World of Maps Gift and Products Store  this holiday season.

Easy of Working with Our Editable PowerPoint Maps

We had a nice comment today from a customer that need to do a lot of customizing on one of our maps. They also need to duplicate the map for a book as well as the web. They bought one of our PowerPoint maps and then we sent along the matching Illustrator map for their designer. We got this comment back.

Bruce,

I am having fun working with the map I just ordered!  You have done a very
good job designing it and making it easy to use.

Thank you for the attached file, I'll forward it to my illustrator.

Have a great weekend!

Rich

Overview Video for Our Editable PowerPoint, Royalty Free Clip Art Maps for Presentations

 
Royalty free, downloadable, editable clip art maps, perfect for setting up sales and marketing presentations, showing sales territories, office locations, defining regions and project progress. Maps are also great for illustrations, websites, education, school projects, home schooling and scrapbooking.

Includes a full range of World maps, USA maps, 50 US States plus territory maps, 50 State County maps, Canada maps and Provinces maps, World Regional maps with editable countries, over 90 individual countries including United States maps, Canada maps, United Kingdom maps, India map, Australia map, and many more.

Each immediately downloadable states, county, or country map, is an individual element that can be easily edited, modified, customized, resized, changed, colored however you like or deleted, group or setup a custom map. All text blocks are live text that can be edited and changed. Easy to make a blank or printable maps for schoolor other projects, just remove the color. All maps come loaded right in a PowerPoint slide for easy editing and work with all the PowerPoint tools. Our editable clip art maps work with all version of PowerPoint on PCs or Macintosh, and with Apple's Keynote presentation software

You can see all of our new How to Edit our PowerPoint maps videos on our editablemaps YouTube Channel

12 New How-to Videos for MapsforDesign Editable PowerPoint Maps

We have been quiet but quite busy lately here at the World of Maps. We have been redoing all of our How-To Videos for editing and customizing our editable PowerPoint Maps for MapsForDesign.com. Reworking each one to clean it up, update for PowerPoint 2007, and give everyone better instructions one how to do the different tasks. It has taken a while but we are done and they are now up on YouTube and will shortly be up on the MapsforDesign.com instruction page.

Some of the thing we did were simplified each video-"One Video/One Idea, aka Ed Dale," rewrote the YouTube and website text, new graphics, consistent look across all videos, beefed up the keyword research for better tags and helping customers find what they need, improved the titles and really worked enhancing the YouTube page. The goal was to have it all done for Labor day so that we can turn the videos over to our web master and he can connect them all to the site. Over the next couple weeks we will post each one here also.

You can visit the YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/editablemaps and see all the new videos

Let us know what you think and are some more videos we should be pulling together.

Sharing World of Maps Clip Art with Your Team or Group

We love getting questions from customers, it lets us know what is going on and where we need to pay attention with our collections. A question on sharing our editable World of Maps with your team came in today from Jennifer.

Questions:
I was wondering, if we purchased the CD-ROM, would it be restricted to a single/private user or could it be used for business across the team/group?

Answer:
Hi Jennifer, thank you for visiting our site and for your question. You are free to use the maps across your team. We want you to be able to do your job and sharing with your coworkers is part of that. If you are going big, with lots of people and offices then we do have licenses for that, but for your regular team that you work with every day, feel free to share.

Technical Question on Making Hi Res JPG Maps from PowerPoint

PowerPoint has a lot of great uses that a lot of people just don't know about. One of them is outputing jpg files that can be used for print or on your website, kind of a poor mans version of Adobe Illustrator.

We had this great question from Carlie on how to make a hi res jpg file from PowerPoint

Question:
When saving as a jpeg, is there a way to edit the resolution? It automatically saves to 96dpi. I'd like to save as 300dpi

Answer: 
Hi, Carlie, thank you for your question. I am assuming you are working out of PowerPoint. Making a jpg file is an easy save as option in the Save As pull down menu under the File menu. Instead of saving the PowerPoint file as a slide deck, just choose jpg.. If you are going to the web then as it saves it is fine, the resolution is 96 dpi, if you are going to print then you might want it higher.

Here is a way to do that. Set up a larger PowerPoint slide, maybe 20" x 20", in document setup, copy the map into it, (this is important, otherwise it gets distorted, don't enlarge the slide with the map in place, copy it onto the new slide), group it, enlarge it and then make the jpg. Then in Photoshop or some other photo editing program you can reduce it down to a smaller size and the resolution will go up proportionally.  You can also just resize the jpg in your layout program and the resolution goes up.

So 9 inches at 100dpi, becomes 300dpi at 2.25, a very easy way to make a hi res jpg file.

We also have a video on this

Zip Code Boundary Maps, Do You Sell Them?

We get this question now and then on if we sell zip code maps on our download editable map sites. The answer is no, but we usually refere people over to a couple of places that do carry them.

Question:
Do you guys sell zip code boundary maps? I can't seem to find them? or Can one display data on your maps

Answer:
The answer is unfortunately no, our maps are very simple and easy to edit and customize but we don't have any ability to display data or to show zip codes. Folks love what we have but zip code maps are a level or two above what we carry. We do have a very nice collection of editable county maps in a couple of different ways that are great for highlighting marketing data and work very well.

If the customer is a marketing person then I usually send them over to look at www.territorymapper.com. If they have lots of money then I usually say look at www.mapinfo.com, they are the biggies in this area. If the questions comes more from a delivery, transportation directions then I say to look at  www.ZipCodeMaps.com. Either of these sites can be very helpful.

Can We Use the World of Maps Editable Clipart Maps in Books?

We had a great question the other day from a customer named Gene on using our editable clip art maps in a book.

Question:
I am interested in using your maps in a book that I will be publishing. are there royalty fees to pay? do I need to indicate source of the maps on each page or at the end of the book?


Answer:
Hi Gene, thank you for visiting our site and for your question. You are free to use the maps in your book, there are no additional royalties that you have to pay and you do not have to mention the source. If you want to somewhere that is cool but we don't require it at all.

The only restriction we have is if you are making a map clipart book, for that we have a license but other than that no problem at all. Would love to know the subject matter and when you get it done let me know and I will put a link to it on our blog if you want.

Very cool, thank you for asking, please let me know if you have questions.

bruce jones

Saving Your Map in PowerPoint as a High Res JPG File

We had a great question today on how to increase the resolution of a jpg file that you can save out of PowerPoint

Question: When saving as a jpeg, is there a way to edit the resolution? It automatically saves to 96dpi. I'd like to save as 300dpi.

Answer: I am assuming you are working out of PowerPoint, I don't think so. I think it is just an save option. If you are going to the web it is fine, if you are going to print then it might not be.

One solution would be if you could  set up a larger PowerPoint slide, maybe 20" x 20", in document setup. Copy the map into it, (this is important, otherwise the map gets distorted), group it, enlarge it and then make the jpg. Then in Photoshop or some other photo editing program you can reduce it down to a smaller size and the resolution will go up proportional.  You can also just resize the jpg in your layout program and the resolution goes up.

So 9 inches at 100dpi, becomes 300dpi at 2.25,

PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator USA Editable County Maps Part 1

Leading off our World of Maps editable US county maps are the states Alabama to Maine. Each county in the collection is an individual element that can be customized to setup a sales or marketing territory for a presentation, illustration or classroom project. Maps are available in both PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator. These maps are from our regional county map collection, which means you can build a region by fitting the maps back together. All of the text is editable and can be changed or removed, you can change colors, sizes, delete parts. County maps are available at www.mapsfordesign.com if you need just one, or at www.bjdesign.com if you need a lot.

Editable USA County Maps - Massachusetts to Ohio, Part 2

The middle states of our editable US county map collection with states Massachusetts to Ohio. Each county is an individual element that can be customized to setup a sales or marketing territory for a presentation. Maps are available in both PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator. These maps are from our regional county map collection, which means you can build a region by fitting the maps back together. All of these county maps come from the same master set. All of the text is editable and can be changed or removed. County maps are available at www.mapsfordesign.com if you need just one, or at www.bjdesign.com if you need alot.

USA Editable County PowerPoint and Illustrator Maps Part 3

Our last directory of editable US county maps with states Oklahoma to Wyoming. Each county is an individual element that can be customized to setup a sales or marketing territory for a presentation. Maps are available in both PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator. All of the text is editable and can be changed or removed. Add a star for an office, color individual counties to show information. County maps are available at www.mapsfordesign.com if you need just one, or at www.bjdesign.com if you need a lot.

Senator Al Franken draws map of USA

Senator Al Franken draws a map of all 50 states from memory during an appearance on Minnesota Public Radio's Midday at the Minnesota State Fair.
It is not uncommon to get a call asking for a map of the 52 US States so it is nice to see one of our newer Senators know just how many states we actually have.

Directory of North America Maps from World of Maps

The America are made up of a lot countries, from very large ones like the US and Canada to little tiny ones like the Cayman Islands. We have draw many of them, above are some from our World of Maps collection.

Including: the United States, Canada, Antiles-Aruba, Argentina, Bahamas, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Caribbean Islands, and the Cayman Islands. All of these maps come in both editable PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator format. All elements can be customized for presentations, design projects, education, classroom. All are printable and by just selecting the land and removing the color you have a blank map that can be customized. See all of our editable country maps at www.bjdesign.com

Top Presentation Tips:
An occasional series on handy tips to help you with your presentations

Keep Your Fonts Simple in Your Presentation
Choose a font that is simple and easy to read. If you travel with your presentation choose a font that you know will be on all PCs like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana, stay away from the fancy ones. One font for headlines and a second for body copy, with the type size fairly large, say 30pt, so everyone can read the slides. Give your font some contrast against the background color to help them stand out.

United Kingdom Editable Printable PowerPoint Maps

Great Britain is in the news lately because of their recent election. so I thought this would be a good couple of maps to show from our collection.

We have two United Kingdom maps. One is a general Great Britain map including Scotland, Wales, England, and Northern Ireland. This map also includes Ireland. This maps has a general breakdown of their administrative districts. We also have a much more detailed UK map showing all of the administrative districts or the counties. This map took a long time to draw and a longer time to find a source for. We ended up licensing it from the Ordinance Department in Britain. I think this department is kind of like our USGS department or something similar. But it is a cool map. Both are available at our websites.

If you are traveling to Great Britain, check out Rick Steves's Great Britain book available at Amazon. I watch his PBS travel shows all the time.

Both of these maps are available in PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator.

She Does a Better Job Than Map Quest! - Slate Article

"She Does a Better Job Than Map Quest!"Wonderful hand-drawn maps from firefighters, club-hoppers, Boy Scout dads, grandmothers, and Alexander Calder.

Julia Turner


"Last month, I asked Slate readers to send me their hand-drawn maps. The request was part of my series on signs, the tools that professionals use to orient us and direct us from point A to point B. But official signs aren't the only things that help us get around. Since early man first drew on his cave wall—including marks that some scholars argue were maps of local rivers and settlements—we've been sketching out routes to guide one another to the market and to the mountain top. "
Read more of this cool article sent to us by one of our readers at the on line magazine Slate . . .

Earthquake Lists and Maps from the USGS

There is a cool page on the USGS website from their Earthquake Hazards Program, it is a list of Earthquake Lists and Maps. The page lists vast amounts of information for the US and the World on Earthquakes. Including: Deadly Earthquakes, Density Maps, General Information, Statistics, the Largest Earthquakes, Historic Earthquakes going back to 856AD.

Here is a fun little earthquake fact. From 1975 - 1995 there were only four states that did not have any earthquakes, florida, Iowa, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

Also included are the Last Earthquakes in each state and country, Seismicity Maps and the really big significant earthquakes. This is as great page for getting all kinds of information on earthquakes. You can also check out all kinds of other info on earthquakes at the USGS Earthquake sites.

World Projections Maps, Mercator, Robinson, Globes

Image directory of the editable world projection maps from our World of Maps collection, either downloaded or on CD-ROM. All of these maps are editable and come in PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator. Collection includes Mercator, Robinson, Sinosouidal and Globe maps. Some have individual countries, and others are broken down by continents. All the elements can be edited, moved, colored, deleted, including the longitude and latitude lines. Because these are fully editable you can easily select the map, customize for your project, delete the color and you have a great blank, printable map. See all of the maps at www.bjdesign.com, samples are available that you can download.

World Countries in Our Editable PowerPoint and Illustrator Map Collection

World illustration of all the countries we have drawn, I think it is about 94 now, in our World of Maps editable royalty free, clip art map collections. Countries from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, South East Asia. All over the place. Each country is fully editable with about half of them including administrative districts, we call ours states Canada calls them provinces. All are available in PowerPoint and in Adobe Illustrator, along with jpg versions in color and black and white. You can see all of them at www.bjdesign.com or www.mapsfordesign.com

Editable Canada Provinces Maps for PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator

Image map directory of the Canadian Provinces maps in our World of Map Collection. Each province is fully editable meaning you can change the text, color the land, remove a highway, and change size. Really anything that you can do in PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator you can do with our maps. Collection includes the Canadian Provinces: Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Maps are available individually from our www.MapsforDesign.com site or if you need a lot then check out our subscription map site, www.bjdesign.com. All maps are fully editable and ready for immediate download in PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator.

Directory of USA, Canada and Mexico Editable PowerPoint and Illustrator Maps

USA, Canada and Mexico images from our World of Maps Collection of editable PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator Maps. All of the maps show are fully editable with each state, province, or text element an individual item. Each one can be customized, colored, moved around how ever you like. These maps are great for doing PowerPoint presentations, building websites, illustrations, graphic design or classroom activities. Maps are available from our two websites, www.bjdesign.com if you need a lot or www.mapsfordesign.com if you need just one.

Our North America maps include, the USA, Canada, North America, USA and Canada, USA and Mexico, Mexico, USA with 2 letter state names and with full names.

Editable Europe Regional World Map, PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator

Europe editable map from our World of Maps collection. Each country and block of text is editable and can be change in PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator. A great map for setting up a territory for a sales region or to edit to show office locations. Countries can be pulled out and enlarged to make a special group.

Each PowerPoint map set comes with the first slide containing land and text, the second slide has just the land and the third has all of your text in case you delete some by mistake. Make sure you check out all of our How to Edit Video located on or sites. To see all of our maps on our subscription site check out www.bjdesign.com

Public Map from Cannon Ski Mountain

From the top of Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire a reader sent us this cool photo of their ski map. Outside and in all its snowiness. So keep them coming we love to see how maps are used out in the world. Have you ever seen Cannon, it is like a straight drop down, it is where Bodi Miller called home.

To see all of our editable maps check out www.bjdesign.com

Searching for Famous Outdoor Globes and Maps

We are on a search for pictures of famous outdoor globes and maps like this one of the Unisphere. The Unisphere is a 12 story, spherical stainless steel representation of the globe. It was constructed to celebrate the beginning of the space age at the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair. It is located in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York City. It is the world's largest global structure weighing in at 700,000 pounds and is 140 feet tall. The diameter is 120 feet.

It was designed by landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke and donated by US Steel. The Unisphere has been featured in film and TV shows of all kinds, including Earth 2100, Law and Order, The King of Queens and of course  the 1997 movie, Men in Black
To learn more about this check out the wikipedia page on it.

We need your help
We are trying to located and post all kinds of global map structures like this, not just globes but also regular indoor and outdoor maps that live in the environment, on walls, buildings, parks, anywhere, flat or dimensional. If you know of any we would love for you to take a picture and email them to us and we will put them up on the blog. We are interested in any kinds, from anywhere in the world. Please email to bruce@bjdesign.com

Mapparium at the Christian Science Plaza

One of the world's coolest maps is the Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library at the Christian Science Plaza in Boston, MA. The mapparium, designed by Chester Lindsay Churchill, is a three story tall glass globe made up of stained glass. When you visit the globe you tour it by walking through its center. This map was built in 1935 in the Library and reflects the world as it was at that time. The library is a  public museum and library at the church and features many exhibits. The globe now features a computer-controlled light show highlighting regions and is designed to be viewed from the inside. Because of its hard glass surface it forms a whispering gallery that lets one hear someone from the far side.  Since 1935 more than 10 million people have visited this amazing structure.

The mapparium can be viewed everyday but Monday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. To learn more visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library website.

Babson College World Globe

Calling all maps, Calling all maps. We are looking for cool outdoor and public maps from anywhere in the world. Let start off with one in our own backyard. This is the World Globe at Babson College in Babson Park, 231 Forest Street, Wellesley, MA . It was dedicated in 1955 and then refurbished in 1993. It is one of the largest free standing globes in the world, 28 feet in diameter and coming in at 25 tons. And it can spin on its base and axis. A buddy of mine who was a student at Babson used to turn it on and get it spinning. You can see more about it on the museum archives page on the Babson.edu site.

We would love to see what you find, so locate a public map, can be in a park, on a wall, on a floor, anywhere, take a picture and send it to me and I will put it up on the blog. Send to bruce(at)bjdesign(dot)com

Using World of Maps in an Upcoming Book

Customer Question: I am interested in using your maps in a book that I will be publishing, are there royalty fees to pay? do I need to indicate source of the maps on each page or at the end of the book?


Answer:  Thank you for visiting our site and for your question. You are free to use the maps in your book, there are no additional royalties that you have to pay and you do not have to mention the source. If you want to somewhere that is cool but we don't require it at all.

The only restriction we have is if you are making a map clipart book, for that we have a license but other than that no problem at all. Would love to know the subject matter and when you get it done let me know and I will put a link to it on our blog if you want.

very cool, thank you for asking, please let me know if you have questions. Check out all our maps at www.mapsfordesign.com

Pacific Rim Map from the US to Japan and Korea

Customer Questions: I am looking for a EPS format map showing the entire Pacific Rim, needs to include west coast of U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Far East, Japan, Korea, China, and also the South Pacific.  Do you have such a map?  If so whats the cost and can I see it?

Answer: We don't have an actual Pacific Rim map but we do have a number of world projection maps in Adobe Illustrator that could be easily edited. I have attached a jpg picture of one, Because you are working in Illustrator (eps) you could easily move the pieces around, and cut off the parts of the map you don't need.  We also have a world projection map with Australia in the center and it is basically a Pacific Rim map.

You can check out all of our maps at www.bjdesign.com, the cost is $149.95 for unlimited download of everything.

Please see attached and let me know if you have any questions on what we offer.

Here is the actual page  for our World Projection maps on our site for you to review, just scroll down to see all of the maps.

Using World of Maps for Slide Presentations

Customer Question: I am interested in the World of Maps for slide presentations on travels. Have a iMac. Will it work. I am look specificially for INDIA, NEPAL, BHUTAN, TIBET?

Answer: Thank you for visiting our site and for your question. Yes you will be able to use our maps with your iMac. We have three formats. So if you have PowerPoint or Keynote then you can use the PowerPoint ones and edit and customize all you want.

If you have Adobe Illustrator then the eps maps would work and you can custom the maps

And if you have neither of these you can use the jpg versions of the maps. The jpgs will go into iPhoto or any photo editing program you might have such as Adobe Photoshop. And if you don't have a photo editing program other than iPhoto then you could use an online one like Picnik to edit and customize http://www.picnik.com/

All of these formats come included for the one price on or subscription site www.bjdesign.com or if you just need a single map then check out www.mapsfordesign.com, or individual site.