Mapping It Out: DIY-Style

Since I'm not ready to reveal our entire invitation suite just yet, I thought I'd share a little bit about one of the elements we're including: the map! Since our guests will need to drive to the church for the ceremony and then to the reception venue afterwards, I figured a map & directions card would probably be helpful. I wanted to design our map because, like I said before, I want our invitations be our own custom work and I'm stubborn. :) I'm still new to Adobe Illustrator, but it has been so helpful for all of our design needs (and it keeps me relatively busy during these slow days of unemployment!) Google has been my bff when it comes to learning all these techniques. What would I do without you, Goog?

I found an easy-to-follow tutorial for designing a map here. If you like, you can follow my rendition of "DIY maps using Illustrator" below...


Making this map was a pretty simple concept: use a googlemap image as a base map and trace over the freeways and streets with brushes. You gotta follow a few steps to get to that point, though.

*click on any of the images below to enlarge*

Step 1: Create the brushes for your roads
You're going to need brushes to trace over your google map. I wanted mine to resemble roads, so I created brushes similar to those in the tutorial I linked above.

Click on the line tool and draw a simple line:

Change the line settings to make it thicker:

Now, draw a second line going right down the middle of your first line. Change the settings for this second line to make it white and thinner.

Here's my freeway design!

Now, it's time to use this "freeway design" to create a brush. Select your design:

Scroll on up to the brush drop-down menu and select "New Brush."

Check "New Art Brush"

Give your art brush a name (I named mine "Freeway") and edit any other properties for the brush as you see fit (I left the properties as-is). Click OK.

And your new brush shows up in your brush drop down menu!


You can follow the same steps to create another brush for streets. You'll see what I mean if you keep reading...

Step 2: Trace
Copy and paste a googlemap image into your Illustrator file. I did this by taking a screenshot of googlemaps, saving the screenshot as a .jpeg, and importing/pasting it into my Illustrator file. (I had to use two screenshot images and line them up to cover all of our desired area.)

Click on your brush tool, make sure you select the "Freeway" brush from your brush drop-down menu, and start tracing those freeways.

Keep tracing! Illustrator has some pre-made map symbols that you can use for intersection points, as seen on the image below. Or, you can design your own by following the steps for creating a new brush.

Continue by tracing the streets. As I mentioned earlier, you can create a new art brush to represent streets. It's easy, just follow Step 1 of these instructions, but change the line settings (for example, make the middle white line much thicker to give the illusion of thinner edges for the streets.)

Once you finish tracing all of your freeways and roads, go ahead and delete the googlemaps base map. You're left with a fresh new map ready to edit to your liking (adding images, labels, deleting parts of the street lines to make smooth intersections, etc). The final editing was actually the most time-consuming part for me, but the results were lookin' good.


There you have it. It may take some time and patience, but it's easy to design your own map...the tools are out there! This is def a project you can finish within the Adobe Illustrator trial period, if you want to go that route. I can't wait to show you the final version once we get these invites printed!

What do you think? Is this DIY-worthy, or something you'd rather outsource? (and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a comment!)