Creating map for polymer plate film
Hello all-
I am printing a wedding invitation for my friend and she wants to print map for her direction card.
In order to create a film for the polymer plate, I will need a black and white map for the location. Does anybody know any trick creating the map?
It will take me forever to draw the map by hand, but I can’t use google map or mapquest map as is for the film, so I decided to email this group.
Please share any ideas if you have any.
Thanks!
One way to create this map is to open the google map in an Illustration program like Adobe Illustrator and draw over the map.
That way everything is in relation to the area the wedding is being held. I’ve done this many times for brides and in my own graphic design work.
You may have to widen the area between the roads to include the text but you will find that out when you start to draw the area.
Casey McGarr
Inky Lips Letterpress
McKinney, TX
I use Delorme’s Street Atlas USA a lot to print maps for getting around, and since I use a B&W printer they come out as line “drawings”. I use an ink-jet printer but I think if you were to use a laser printer the result could be used to make a polymer plate.
How complex a map do you want to draw? We routinely hand-draft maps for illustrations and/or invitations, and rarely take more than an hour or so to produce a relatively complicated one.
The trick is to draw it considerably bigger than the finished size, and then reducing it in the darkroom.
We’ve found that this is one area where hand-work is often faster than trying to it digitally….. but then again, my folks are all “old school” draftsmen and layout people.
I trace it in Adobe Illustrator also, that way I can also control the stroke thickness