Make your maps more engaging – have them as cartoons!

Everyone loves a cartoon. Whether we see them in the newspaper or online, they never seem to fail to engage their audience in a meaningful way. They are a great way of conveying information or a story to audiences of all ages in an interesting and appealing fashion. With this in mind, why should it be any different for your business?

When we visit festivals, theme parks, hotels, or even castles, it’s not uncommon for some of them to have a fun cartoon map to show visitors around. This creates a relaxing and fun atmosphere right from when they first look at it to see where they are going. It can also mean that people do not have to be able to understand the text to be able to gain information from the map. This means that your information is accessible to a wider range of audiences than it would have been otherwise.

Kids Kingdom - cartoon map. Crazy bikes, big top tent, Sooty and Sweep entertainment

Another advantage to having cartoon maps drawn of your offices or grounds means that they are more accessible to children, who might find more formal maps either confusing or hard to understand. Cartoon maps create a more friendly and inviting atmosphere feel that engages children more effectively than a normal map might do. Adding happy and friendly looking people to certain points on the map can attract children to certain family-orientated parts of your map. More importantly in some cases, making points bright and appealing to children can help them to identify where to go if they are lost or in an emergency such as a fire.

But what about an environment that isn’t necessarily children or family orientated such as corporate offices? Every good manager knows that a workforce that has a high moral will, in turn, work harder for your company. While a cartoon map is unlikely to be the missing piece of the puzzle that will finally make your workforce work harder, it can help to create a more inviting and friendlier atmosphere in their place of work. A more inviting atmosphere is also a big advantage for welcoming visitors to the office as it will make them feel more at home!

Overall, cartoon maps are a great asset to have in any environment. Whether they are for the purposes of navigation, entertaining children, or just creating a more inviting atmosphere for your workforce, they will make a nice addition to any piece of information.

For your next cartoon map please contact Richard: email 

PennFest cartoon map, map of festival site, main arena

Cartoon Map – What Is Engineering?

Cartoon map created to illustrate ‘What Is Engineering?’

cartoon map for What Is Engineering. Map illustrating different job opportunities in engineering

Here’s the original brief that was emailed to me…

Dear Richard,
I hope you might be able to help us.
We’re looking to develop an illustration that captures as many elements of engineering as possible in a single street scene.
The scene would feature some of the following elements:
·       Aircraft flying overhead
·       Car driving along street stopped at traffic lights
·       User with laptop in café (also with mobile phone/ PDA)
·       Cash point
·       Games shop & arcade – perhaps on a pier (see below)
·       Rail station & train departing
·       Seaside (marine engineering)
·       Offshore oilrig
·       Recycling bank/ refuse collection
·       Drainage/ road surfacing
·       Supermarket
·       Nuclear power station
·       Background construction of a skyscraper
·       TV/ Radio station with transmitter
·       Wind turbine/ solar panel other obviously green electricity-producing mechanism
·       Drinks factory (pop – owing to likely audience age group)
·       Theme park in the distance?
·       Weather balloon floating high

At the moment this list is not exhaustive, and equally not all of the components listed here need be included – but if you can get an idea of the general picture we’re looking for from this that’s great.
The illustration would be for print and would be featured in a booklet for pre-GCSE pupils. Each of the components listed above would have some accompanying text – but no more than a line or two explaining how engineers have made its development possible. There would therefore need to be sufficient space for the text to accompany the illustrations.

As a theme, I have in mind the cartoon maps that theme parks have to guide visitors round. The idea is that in addition to it being relatively straightforward and easy to grasp the information contained in the text, the students would be drawn into the scene and would have lots of distracting elements to look at (e.g. a few random activities in context of the above but with no explanatory text – someone falling into the duck pond or whatever!)
Many thanks,
S D