Put Your Love for Your Favorite City on Display with Fun Map Art
What is YourOwnMaps?
YourOwnMaps is a brand-new, San Francisco-based company that offers their adventurous customers travel memorabilia in the form of personalized map art. The company’s goal is to bring people closer to their favorite places on earth. Whether it’s one of your usual vacation spots, your hometown, or a city where you met someone special, YourOwnMaps will turn any destination into a modern wall map that you can proudly display in your home.
How Does It Work?
When creating your map, you’ll be asked to type in the name of a city or region. YourOwnMaps will let you select any town in the world, no matter how big or small it might be. Alternatively, you can use one of the company’s pre-made pieces and edit it to suit your tastes. Once you’ve chosen a location, you’ll be able to zoom in and out and drag the map around to achieve the exact scale you want. Edit the text printed on the map by typing out your own header, subheader, and tagline. If you opt out of including a custom tagline, the text will default to your destination’s latitude and longitude coordinates.
You can also customize the color of your map. Currently, the company prints in blue, green, red, yellow, colored, and light (white) for a total of six options. This means you can easily match your map to your or your recipient’s home decor! You can’t go wrong with the sleek black and white option, though those with an eye for color might prefer a bright, popping shade of red. Finally, select your desired layout, landscape or portrait, and poster size. Submit your design, make the payment, and wait for the magic to happen!
YourOwnMaps monitors each order from start to finish, working with family-owned printing shops and hand-checking each poster to ensure the best possible quality. In the future, the company hopes to collaborate with local artists to further expand their range of available graphic and design options. Once all of your specifications have been met, YourOwnMaps packages your order and ships it to you from the United States.
Who is Behind this Map Art Concept?
Co-founder Humphrey Yang created YourOwnMaps.com as a solution to his own struggles with souvenir shopping. Upon taking a trip to Switzerland and Austria, Yang was enchanted by a set of large-scale wall maps he saw being sold as tourist memorabilia. Unfortunately, limited luggage space prevented him from bringing any of them home. As soon as he got back to North Carolina, Humphrey was determined to find a piece of artwork that resembled what he had seen in Europe as a way of commemorating his recent adventure.
Try as he might, he could not find a regional map that matched his vision. Having nowhere else to turn to, Yang began to create his own in early 2017 with the launch of YourOwnMaps. The phrase “Bring your adventures from anywhere, everywhere” aptly became their slogan, which embraces the idea that all travel memories can live on through their cartography. The company’s website reads, “Our mission is for our community to be able to relive their experiences, give the gift of a memory, or just explore the world through a custom printed map!”
How Much Does Map Art Cost and Where Can I Get It?
These maps are only available on the company’s website and cost $55 per standard 18×24 inch print. For an additional $15, you can have your map made in a larger 24×36 inch size. Shipping takes just a few days, which means you can have your artwork up on the wall within a week of placing your order!
