To avoid cluttering your map with labels, you may want to include a legend for markers, colors, and pins to help guide its users.How will you signify elevation and forestation? How will you imply the hierarchy of city sizes? How big must a town (or an airport, or a body of water) be to warrant inclusion? And how will you convey all of this with a visual scheme that’s clean and attractive?Īccording to independent cartographers I spoke with, the big mapmaking corporations of the world employ type-positioning software, placing their map labels (names of cities, rivers, etc.) according to an algorithm. It may even be enough to indicate an arrow pointing north and leave off the other directions. A compass lets other users know which way north is located on a map. If needed, color areas of the map to indicate differences whether that be sales territories, areas affected by a disease or the habitats of different animals.
These are included in SmartDraw's custom map libraries and you can easily stamp and drag-and-drop them to your map. Use text and graphics (such as push pins, arrows, and other symbols) to label the map with key information. SmartDraw offers map outlines from all over the world. SmartDraw makes creating maps easier with the help of lots of included templates you can customize with colors, logos, pins and more. Watch this quick tutorial on creating a sales map. You may want to showcase your company's sales territories or data about expansion or branch locations. To represent data specific to your organization. However, you may find yourself needing to use a map You probably don't need to recreate a map of any general geographic location. Objects closer to the poles appear larger than objects near the Equator. It's a cylindrical map projection that creates a rectangle shaped version of Earth but distorts the size of the continents. It is named after its creator, a Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator. Mercator is the map of the globe most people are familiar with. These are created using different projections of the whole or part of the Earth's sphere. Most maps used in presentations however have to be flattened to be useful. Maps can also illustrate where shops are located in a mall, how subway lines crisscross a city, what hiking trails are available in a park, and the layout for a historic battle.Ī globe is probably the most accurate map we have of the Earth. These maps are called sales territory maps. Maps are also commonly used to outline territories in sales and marketing. For example, imagine trying to illustrate the countries where your company has resellers or the cities your airline has routes to. These maps are often less realistic and more symbolic of the areas they represent. Maps can also be used in presentations to illustrate or educate. Without these maps we'd be lost just as our ancestors would have been without their hand-drawn directions.
You're probably familiar with digital maps used by GPS devices and phones for navigation. Its main job is to show where things are located in relationship to one another. A map is a scaled and flattened visual representation of a larger geographical area showing topographic details, buildings, and roads.