Custom Cartography

Do you have a vision for your project and our standard maps don’t quite hit the spot? Or you would like to make a few changes to one of our pre-made map styles so the colours, icons or other detailing is exactly right for you?

Do you want to do this quickly and efficiently, without your team needing to learn new software or take a crash course in cartography?

We’d love to help. We have over 15 years of experience and skills in high-performance online cartography. We’re a formative contributor to OpenStreetMap, and are the team behind OpenCycleMap.

Within a few days, we can get your custom style up and running as a first iteration, ready for you to review. We can then work with you to make sure you’re 100% happy with your custom map style.

Why use Thunderforest?

With over 15 years mapping experience, we can quickly create whatever style you need. We’ll discuss your needs, take your desired outcome, and make it happen. You don’t need to specify every last detail, since this is where our experience comes in. We can spot potential problems and take care of them before they become an issue.

Many of our customers come to us after trying out a DIY map creator (Mapbox, Maptiler, Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps) and been disappointed with the results. Our article Custom Maps for Developers explores the challenges of using DIY map creators.

What customisation changes can we make?

We can make changes to our ready-to-use map styles. We can also convert your existing map styles, or even create a map from scratch.

We encourage you to ‘zoom out’ and consider what an ideal map would look and feel like for your users.

Our expertise as digital cartographers is to do the ‘thinking’ so you don’t have to. Instead of asking you to make hundreds of small decisions about path width and icons, you’re welcome to give us higher-level pointers, suggestions and examples.

We’ll then create a map that is suitable for you, and which draws on our deep knowledge of global cartography to pre-empt problems and embrace good practice.

Below are questions to help you think about what kind of map you need:

What do your users need?

• Who are your map users?
• What do they need to do?
• What’s most important to them? (off-line use, use in the dark, finding restaurants, identifying cycle paths etc.)
• If you’re using another map at the moment, what’s not working very well?

Pointers, suggestions, examples

• Do you like one of our ready-to-use maps but it isn’t quite right?
• Do you like another digital map and want us to use it as inspiration?
• Do you have brand colours or preferred colours you’d rather use?

Changing details

Do you have specific changes to details you need us to implement? This is optional. You don’t need to ask us to change details.

• Road/path colour or width
• Remove or add points of interest
• Colour changes to anything
• Zoom levels for key information

Browse custom map examples by Thunderforest to get an idea of what we can do.

Converting your existing map styles

If you have already started creating your map in Tilemill, Maputnik or another cartography system, we can convert your style to be powered by Thunderforest.

We can also work with you to recreate any styles that you have created through other mapping companies.

We’ve worked with companies all around the world to perfect the look and navigate through the cartographic and data options.

We can also convert your existing map styles from CartoCSS, Mapnik XML, Cascadenik, SLD or even ArcMap .lyr styles to work with our Thunderforest vector tiles.

Custom Data Sources

Do you have your own data sources that you want to display on your maps? In most cases, using a data overlay layer is sufficient, but alternatively we can integrate your custom data sources - like shapefiles, geotiffs or other GIS data - directly into the cartography.

For example, this would allow you to show points of interest without label clashes, or use your polygons as a background layer with roads and labels drawn cleanly over the top. If you think this would be useful, please ask us for more details.

Pricing

The maintenance charge includes any other cartography changes or updates that you’d like to make to your custom style.

All prices shown exclude VAT.

Our process

1. Contact us with an idea of what you’d like creating or changing.

   You can give us a detailed specification, including visuals. Or give us a rough idea and leave the entire implementation to us.

   If you have an existing map style, please send us the source code, if available.

   Contact us at: support (at) thunderforest (dot) com

2. We’ll get back to you, with confirmation and any follow up questions.

3. We’ll supply you with a first iteration, normally within 14 days. Usually, we’ll be faster, depending on our exact schedule. Let us know if the timescale is a deal breaker for you or if you have a hard deadline for your project.

   We set up your custom style on our platform, and provide you with a link to review it.

4. We can put your custom map style into production immediately.

   If you have feedback, we’ll iterate until you are completely happy with the result.

5. We’ll continue to be available to make changes and updates to your custom map, on a month by month basis.

What you can do next

After you’ve contacted us about our custom cartography style, our best advice is that you test your integration with our APIs using one of our existing map styles.

You can do this using our free plan, so there’s no up-front cost.

You can get our maps working with your tech set up, and see the kind of service we offer, and check that everything meets your needs.

When your custom map style is ready, you simply need to tweak the code of the existing map style that you’ve already implemented. Your custom map style will then be ready for your customers.