Get Bespoke Map Prints of Your Holidays from Here

Honeymoons, college graduations, that trip to the tropics that you finally took with your friends. These are memories that deserve to be cherished in multiple ways. Sometimes, photographs and videos can get a little blasé. This is especially true for when you have guests at home. Gone are the days of hefty albums that are drawn out for a fun time, and swiping through your smartphone gallery doesn’t exactly have the same charm. Instead, for an old school hit that’s sure to stir up questions, try framed map prints.

Classy, detailed, and definitive, you can get beautiful framed designs at home with the click of a button. With the options for customisation, the companies leading the charge for these prints have kept in mind individual tastes and home décor trends, so don’t worry about the print sticking out like a sore thumb on your wall. Instead, it’s guaranteed to be a piece that draws positive attention. 

Most major map poster brands are based internationally, and finding the right fit can be a harrowing process. We’ve compiled three here that are well-known for their quality, and ship internationally to India. The next time you’re out of meaningful gifting ideas, you know where to look:

Grafomap Posters

Pocket Pinch: $49 (Rs 3,510) plus shipping for a 50x70 poster. Gift wrapping and hanger charges extra.

Verdict: Our top pick in this compilation, by virtue of the number of clean, attractive options in store. There’s more classic, antiquated looking templates like ‘Bourbon’ and ‘Antiqua’, versus more vibrant and playful ones like ‘Wheatpaste’ and ‘Noir’. Each of the styles come with a different, preset margin-font size-font style combo that keeps things exciting. Latitudes and longitudes are automatically punched in whenever you type in a location, and you can put in pointers that mark milestones around home, education, and love. As an exercise in quality control, this Latvian company claims to have a ‘hassle free’ refund policy in case things go south.

City Art Posters

Pocket Pinch: Starting from $28.84 (approx. Rs 2,070) for small poster prints (16.4inch, one side).

Verdict: City Art prides itself on the “hours of...work on cartography, typography and graphic design” that is put into each poster so that it’s worthy of being a statement piece in your house. With the intricate designs on display, we sure believe it. The map prints can be adapted for pillows, phone cases and t-shirts, which is great, but the limited list of city options narrows things down a bit too much for our liking. Mumbai and New Delhi are the only Indian ones up for grabs, so we’d suggest you reserve this portal for after a European or US vacation.

Mapiful

Pocket Pinch: Starting from €39 (Rs 3,092) for 30x40cm prints. Shipping is free, but you can speed up deliveries for a fee. 

Verdict: Mapiful probably has the most well-known and well-made posters out of all three, but its higher price point is what places Grafomap a step above for us. If money were no object, though, Mapiful would be the clear winner, with the highest range of poster sizes and styles; you can even pick between portrait and landscape orientation, and customise colours and the  overall ‘look’. We love the cheeky sense of humour when it comes to branding—they even released a ‘Flat Earth’ poster for April Fools this year.