Maps to license

March 1, 2012 7:37 PM

Where can I find maps to license for print media?

I'm specifically looking for maps of the Hawaiian Islands, especially the Island of Maui with major roads and towns indicated. To reiterate, this is for print media, not for the web. I'm assuming I need to license this, although if there are free or public domain sources I would be interested in those too.

posted by Muirwylde to media & arts (8 answers total)

Would OpenStreetMap suffice? You can get extracts of the world from CloudMade, open them up in QGIS and export them as vectors. If you still need to tweak the vectors you can use Inkscape.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:53 PM on March 1, 2012

You can try a site like Shutterstock.com or Thinkstock.com -- royalty free stock photos and illustrations. They have lots of high res vector maps you can license for print media.
posted by shamash at 8:02 PM on March 1, 2012

(Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure they'll have road maps, which is what it sounds like you're looking for. Of course, you can always license a map and draw the roads on it.)
posted by shamash at 8:04 PM on March 1, 2012

Lots of freely licensed ones on Wikimedia Commons, of course. Look at the licensing details for each one as some may require attribution.
posted by XMLicious at 8:18 PM on March 1, 2012

If womble's suggestion is above your skill level, I just had a good experience hiring someone to do some mapping stuff for me with basically those ingredients at Elance.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:22 PM on March 1, 2012

Map Resources offers royalty-free vector maps for use in Illustrator and other print programs.
posted by migurski at 11:16 PM on March 1, 2012

A Creative Commons search might help (though I'm betting you already tried that). Recently I found a great and hard-to-find map of my town there that allowed for commercial usage.
posted by youandiandaflame at 4:49 AM on March 2, 2012

Planiglobe releases customizable maps under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. Don't know if it would be detailed enough for your needs, though.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:05 AM on March 2, 2012