topic Make your own custom map in GIS Life Discussions

Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:01:28 GMT

MapMaker is a free map making tool to help educators and journalists to quickly create customized, colored maps.

Users can select colors and apply them directly to individual states by clicking on the map, making it easy to visualize patterns, comparisons, and geographic concepts.

USA map maker

Europe map maker

Completed maps can be downloaded for use in assignments, presentations, lesson materials, or openly shared educational resources.

I would love to get your thoughts on:

Does the interface feel intuitive for students/non-GIS users?
Are there specific maps that you think must be added?
How could this be improved for your specific curriculum?

Thanks!

Re: Make your own custom map

VenkataKondepati — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:31:54 GMT

Hi @waiteasy,

It looks good for non-GIS users or students to play and learn about the basics.

Do you have plans to add more features, such as filtering or comparison?

Do you have a GitHub repo, and are you open to contributing?

Re: Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:43:55 GMT

Hi, thank you for your feedback.

I do plan to add more features, I'm trying to understand what is most useful, I'm currently thinking about adding markers to the maps.

I currently do not have a repo to share.

Re: Make your own custom map

Gisbert61 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:02:42 GMT

Would be nice to cover the rest of the globe (98.3%) 😉 but i understand you have to start somewhere.

Re: Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:50:57 GMT

Hi! I’m planning to keep adding more maps / features. I just want to avoid building things no one uses. Is there a particular map you’d like to see?

Re: Make your own custom map

Gisbert61 — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 10:29:31 GMT

How about Europe?

Re: Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:02:21 GMT

You can access other maps from the menu, I updated this post to include the Europe map.

Re: Make your own custom map

ODWC_GIS — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:55:20 GMT

Pretty nice. 🙂

Infill Color/Pattern
»»Render the Patterns under the Outlines. You allowed the user to enthicken the outlines, but it begins to look odd under the infill patterns.
»»No Undo Option.
»»Eventually, I realized I could use the Eyedropper to select an as-yet unfilled-state to set the color to the default grey, and overwrite the fill.

»»Very good use of pattern infill, for when colors may be indistinguishable.

Text
»»Give the option to use a solid white background behind text? Or a translucent white?
»»I zoomed in to my state, filled the surrounding states, and made a key that was hard to see atop the colors and patterns.
»»Same for the Title.

Europe Map
»»What projection is this?
»»Iceland looks a bit weird... do you not include Greenland? Greenland would look really weird.
»»Why is United Kingdom shown as single country?

I am pleased to see I can use this for annoying the English.

Re: Make your own custom map

ODWC_GIS — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:49:17 GMT

Nice assortment of available fonts. But they're all Bold, and only Bold.

The Map Key is in the same order as the User's order of filling polygons. It'd be nice to be able to rearrange them after the fact.

You included the weird bits far north of the "normal" Norway, but you've not included Greenland? Nope. You need to fix that. And when you fix that, pull the countries of Great Britain apart too.

I say, but this is fun!

I should probably stop soon...

Re: Make your own custom map

ODWC_GIS — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Contrast between Font and Background could use some tweaking...

I may be enjoying your application a wee bit too much.

Re: Make your own custom map

ODWC_GIS — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:25:19 GMT

That "Relatively" is carrying an awful lot of extra weight.

Re: Make your own custom map

tuoaawg26 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 05:37:39 GMT

YES, but haven't had sufficient access to GitHub for free.

Re: Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 03:37:30 GMT

Thank you so much for the feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of this. It’s very helpful, I'll try to go through all of these.

Also, the maps you created look amazing!

Re: Make your own custom map

waiteasy — Mon, 04 May 2026 02:41:27 GMT

Hi,

Sorry it took this long, but I was finally able to improve several of the things you mentioned.

I added automatic font contrast for the labels, title, and legend.

I also improved the font size and weight, and added an option to customize them using the button next to the font settings.

The legend labels can now be reordered by dragging and dropping with the handle.

Undo and redo were already implemented, and you can also use Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y.

I added an eraser button so you can clear state/country colors when needed.

I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by thickened outlines. I didn’t create the maps used in the app, they came that way so I’m somewhat limited in how much I can modify them.

Again, your feedback has been very helpful. Please keep it coming!

Kind regards,