Have you ever wanted to create a map to fill out your fantasy novel, or create a personal memento of a place you've been? With just a little planning and designing, you'll be a mapmaker in no time!
Step
Part 1 of 3: Designing a Map
Step 1. Determine the size of the map
Before you start drawing, you must determine how large the map will be. Are you planning to show the entire planet (perhaps Earth) spread out, a hemisphere, a continent, a country, or just a province or city? This applies to both real maps and imaginary maps created from your imagination.
Step 2. Determine the land-to-water ratio for your map
With certain exceptions, you must create a map (except for a close-up map) that contains both water and land. But you have to determine exactly how big each part is shown. For large-scale maps, you should show oceans, rivers, and lakes. Smaller scale maps may show only part of the ocean, rivers, or some lakes and ponds. If your map has only a small amount of land on an island type map, then you're likely to produce a map consisting mostly of water with a few islands.
Step 3. Consider what you will include in the map
What map style did you create? Geographic/physical, political, roadmap, or other maps? The type of map to create can change how you outline or draw it, so determine this before starting your project. Of course you can create a map that is a combination of all three, but you should reduce the amount of detail you include in order to avoid complications for the viewer.
You can create maps based on other features as well, such as trade routes, highly populated places, or different languages
Step 4. Decide how detailed the map will be
This is closely related to deciding what to include or the scale of the map, and which is still quite important to note. Are you planning to only mark the largest or most important places on the map? Or, are you interested in showing even the smallest aspects of what you describe? The details you want to include may have a big impact on how large you physically draw the map (on very large paper or files, or small files or paper sizes).
Step 5. Think about weather patterns
While this is especially true for those who create their own imaginary maps, thinking about weather patterns is important to highlight certain physical aspects of your map. Where will it rain a lot or where is the desert area? Will these areas correspond to sea/oceanic locations, mountains, and locations on Earth (like real-life locations)? You can consider the climate/environment and weather patterns of certain areas before sketching them, to create a more detailed and realistic map.
Step 6. Choose how you will create the map
Are you planning to draw a map by hand, use a computer program to draw it, or create a map using an interactive map maker on the Internet? Each of these options will require different preparation, especially if you intend to draw them yourself by hand. There are also dozens of map-making programs on the Internet, if you're not interested in putting in so much effort or unsure of your own artistic abilities.
Part 2 of 3: Drawing a Map
Step 1. Draw the outline of the land
Once you've decided how detailed your map will be, you should have an idea of how much land you're going to draw and its general size. Start with a rough outline using straight lines to sketch the land. When you've got your outline drawn the way you want it, draw it again to create a more detailed (usually slightly wavy) outline that depicts the beach and its boundaries.
- When drawing the outline of the landmass, consider where the tectonic plate (imaginary or real) will lie beneath it. This will help you build a more realistic map, assuming you drew it from your imagination.
- Add details like peninsulas, islands, archipelagos, deltas, or bays to the mainland.
Step 2. Add a waterway
It is generally assumed that the area around land is an ocean or a large body of water. But now you have to add any smaller water pools or waterways that you may want to include. These collections or waterways are usually rivers, lakes, seas, canals, and bays. Depending on how detailed the map is, ponds, streams, creeks, and coves may also be included on your map.
If the body of water is small but important (such as a cove or canal), then you can mark it on the map and state that it is small
Step 3. Add details on the land
You can add a lot of detail to the land depending on the style of the map you want, but in general there is at least a little bit of detail added. Consider adding mountains, valleys, deserts, forests, and highlands to the land. Keeping weather and climate patterns in mind, you can add jungles, rainforests, swamps, tundra, grasslands and rocks scattered across your map.
Step 4. Place the countries or cities
Just like before, this will also vary depending on the style of the map being created, but in general it will help to add outlines for the countries/regions and add some main cities. Show the division of continents, state boundaries, and regions with simple lines. This division may follow natural boundaries such as rivers or mountains, or it can be entirely up to you. You can indicate cities with selected symbols, usually small dots of asterisks or plus signs.
Step 5. Add color to the map
Maps become much more useful with the addition of color. Colors can indicate different styles of land (as in physical maps), indicate different countries (as in political maps), or simply as decoration. If you prefer not to add color, at least add some shadow in black and white/grey. You can add detailed layers of color to show specific parts such as a city or forest using a variety of color palettes, or you can use just two to three colors as a basic differentiator.
Step 6. Label the map
Technically, you don't have to add labels to the map, but it's also confusing if you don't label them. Start by labeling the largest and most important areas. You can indicate that these areas are the largest and most important by using larger font than the other labels. If you want more detail, label more areas on the map. Use different font styles to represent different types of labels, including italics or bold (or handwritten).
Part 3 of 3: Adding Information
Step 1. Create a map key
Map keys are small squares that show the symbols or colors you use across the map. These symbols or colors will help the map reader to understand the meaning of the type of line or marker, as well as why you have chosen to use a particular color. Be sure to include every symbol you use in your map key, so you don't confuse the map reader.
Map keys are sometimes referred to as legends
Step 2. Add the scale
The scale indicates how many kilometers are represented for one centimeter on the map. You can scale it by drawing a small line at the bottom that shows how far away a distance is drawn within a small part of an area. You can also add an inset map of the enlarged or reduced section to show the scale more accurately. If you want, you can add a ratio to your scale instead of drawing the whole thing (eg 1 centimeter: 100 kilometers).
Step 3. Show the map direction
You can indicate the direction of the map by adding the cardinal points in the blanks of the map. These cardinal points will indicate the direction of the map, such as north/south and west/east. This is especially useful if the direction of your map is unusual, for example north is close to the bottom.
Step 4. Add latitude and longitude lines
The lines of latitude and longitude may not be necessary on imaginary maps, but they are almost always necessary on real-world maps. These lines divide the map vertically and horizontally, so a specific location can be found by looking at the coordinates of these lines. Make sure that these lines are perfectly straight and have a fixed distance.
Step 5. Provide time/date
Areas shown on maps, both physically and politically, often change over time (even on imaginary maps). For this reason, you must note the time or date when the map was drawn on the map page. You may also want to include the actual date the map was drawn, although it is more important to make a note of the range of the date the map was drawn.
Step 6. Add more in-depth explanatory notes
You may be interested in writing some explanatory notes on a section of the map. These explanatory notes are not mandatory, but will be useful if your map is not organized like a regular map or if it is an imaginary map that you created. These explanatory notes are usually located at the bottom edge of the map, so the map reader knows that these explanatory notes are not intended to describe a specific location on the map.
Tips
- Sketch the map on scribble first, then transfer the plan to better paper.
- If this helps, know the scale of the population and area before drawing the map. This will help with the scale and overall effect. Whatever you do, try not to draw every detail before you're happy with the rest.
