Vector City Map for Designers: Posters, Print and Brand Maps
Designers need city maps for very different jobs: a minimalist poster of a hometown, a map on a hotel brochure, a venue plan for a festival, a branded map in an annual report. In every case a vector map saves hours compared with tracing a screenshot: streets stay sharp at any size, and every road, building or park can be recoloured or removed. This overview explains how to get such a map from OpenStreetMap data and how to choose the format.
Typical design jobs
- Posters and prints - minimalist city maps as decor, often just streets and water.
- Print collateral - location maps in brochures, menus, invitations and catalogues.
- Wayfinding and event maps - venue plans for festivals, campuses and business parks.
- Brand maps - maps in corporate colours for reports, presentations and websites.
Step 1. Select the area in the map builder
Open the map builder and draw a rectangle around the part of the city you need: zoom with the mouse wheel, drag to move, then press and drag to outline the area. A smaller area exports faster and keeps more detail - a single district takes seconds, a whole city can take several minutes.
Step 2. Pick a map style and level of detail
The style sets the colours and line weights of the exported drawing. Minimal gives a clean base that is easy to restyle, blueprint gives a ready drawing look, and there are other styles such as standard and neon. The level of detail ranges from an overview (major roads only) to maximum (every building and footpath); the builder suggests a sensible level for the size of the area. You can also choose the sheet format: A4, A3 or custom.
Step 3. Choose the format for your tool
| Where the map goes | Format |
|---|---|
| Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Figma | SVG or AI |
| CorelDRAW | CDR |
| Print shop or client proof | |
| Layout templates and prepress | EPS |
SVG arrives split into named groups - roads, buildings, water, greenery - and the CDR file has named layer groups too, which makes them the most comfortable for restyling. AI is a single artboard with paths, fills and editable text. EPS and PDF are the usual hand-over formats.
Step 4. Open the file in your editor
Open the file directly rather than placing it as a linked image, so that the paths stay editable. Collapse the layer tree first: a city district can hold thousands of objects.
Step 5. Style the layers
- Recolour whole groups to the brand palette in one action.
- Hide minor layers (footpaths, small buildings) for a cleaner composition.
- Vary line weights by road class to build visual hierarchy.
- Add your own typography for the title and key places; the exported object names can stay as a reference layer or be removed.
Practical notes
Match the level of detail to the final size - an A2 poster of a whole city and an A6 location map of one block need very different amounts of data. Plan the colour mode: SVG, AI, EPS and PDF are exported in RGB, while the CDR file uses CMYK. Keep an untouched copy of the export as a reference before heavy editing.
Related guides
Step-by-step guides for specific tools: Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, EPS, .ai file and layered city map.
Credit the data
The maps are built from OpenStreetMap data, which is published under the Open Database License. When you print or publish a map, keep a short credit such as "© OpenStreetMap contributors" somewhere on the layout - in the corner of a poster or in the imprint of a brochure.