Typographic street map

A map of your city where every street is written in its own name. The letters follow the curve of each road, rivers and parks are filled in colour, and a title sits at the foot. Print it and hang it.

Find your place

Drag and zoom the map: the frame is your print.

Area across

About 1 to 1.5 km suits an old town with short streets, and 2 to 3 km a city of long avenues. A smaller area gives more room for each name.

Shape and size

Width

Bigger prints have room for more names. Over 250 mm, check it fits your printer's bed.

A raised frame around the edge A title at the foot

Title Second line

Lettering

Letter height

The capitals of an ordinary street. Main roads and rivers are bigger, lanes a little smaller. 2.1 mm and up prints cleanly with a 0.4 mm nozzle.

How often each name repeats

Capitals Rivers and canals by name Lakes and the sea by name Named footpaths and cycle paths Railway and tram lines by name Streets with no name as fine lines

A street too short for its full name gets the usual short form (St, Ave, Bd, R., Str.), and if that is still too long, slightly smaller letters. Names are never squeezed or cut. Tunnels are left out.

Water and parks

Water

Parks

Flush colour needs a multi-colour printer: the water and parks are their own parts, set into the top of the plate. On a one-colour printer, "Sunk in" makes them shallow hollows you can paint, or that show as texture.

Colours

Plate Names Water Parks

Print

Plate thickness Letters raised by

0.6 to 1 mm reads well and prints fast. Use a whole number of layers.

Download

The poster SVG is the same map as a flat picture, at the print's size: print it on paper, cut or engrave it with a laser, or scale it up for a wall.

Free for personal use, and for selling up to $5,000 a year with a TerraPrinter credit. Bigger sellers need a commercial license. Keep the data credits. License

How the typographic map works

Streets made of names

Every street in the frame is drawn with nothing but its own name, from OpenStreetMap. The parts of a street are joined end to end first, so a long avenue reads as one line of repeated names rather than a scatter of pieces.

Letters that follow the road

Each letter is placed on its own, turned to the direction of the road where it sits, so names bend round curves. Names always read left to right or upwards, never upside down, and a stretch that bends too sharply for its letters is skipped.

Nothing touches

Main roads and rivers are placed first and largest, then the smaller streets in the space left. Every letter keeps clear of every other word, and two names never run into one where streets meet.

Water and parks

Rivers, lakes, the sea and parks are filled shapes, set flush into the top of the plate in their own colours. River names run along the river, and big lakes get their name in the middle.

Made to print

The plate prints flat, face up, with no supports. The names stand up by a few layers, so on a one-colour printer a single filament change at the height in the print tips gives you two colours.

Short streets

A street shorter than its full name gets the usual short form, like St for Street or Bd for Boulevard, and if that is still too long, letters a little smaller. Below that it stays blank rather than being squeezed.

Streets, water and parks © OpenStreetMap contributors. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Fonts under the SIL Open Font License. More for your home: wall maps, name tags, lithophane lamps, open the TerraPrinter app or see more 3D map gift ideas.