Maps are now essential elements of almost every website. For many mobile app interfaces, a map is also a must-have. When it comes to developing a taxi-booking app, a map is indispensable.
How can you create a unique map without spending too much time on its development? These free tools for designers will help any designer easily create a map that matches the style of the service they’re developing.
With 16 years of experience in developing software for transportation and logistics, Stfalcon provides services for developing apps for online taxi booking, delivery services, and fleet management. Check out our case studies, and feel free to contact us if your goal is to create a reliable app for a transportation company.
Best Free Tools to Create and Customize Maps
Snazzy Maps
Snazzy Maps is a free map-building tool designed to work with Google Maps. This service for designers lets you create your own map style to make your design unique. Snazzy Maps will help you choose an interesting map from a selection of ready-made designs. You can also create your own map styles here.
This map-building service includes a rating system—you can sort pre-made map styles by relevance, popularity, and more. It’s also very convenient that Snazzy Maps offers plugins for embedding maps into a website or app.
Heat Map Tool
The tool’s name speaks for itself: Heat Map Tool is designed for creating heat maps. Using the tool is quite simple—just upload a map in CSV format and select the desired effects.
Using the map creation tool, you can choose where to place the heat zone and make your map truly unique. Heat Map Tool lets you choose:
- Colors and gradients for heat zones;
- Background color;
- The radius of hotspots;
- The extent of heat zones, and more.
Free Vector Maps
The Free Vector Maps resource provides free maps of all cities, regions, countries, and parts of the world in vector format. On the site, any designer can download a map for free to insert it into the layout they’re working on. Map layouts are available for free download; to access them, simply disable Adblock in your browser, as the site is ad-supported.
Animaps
Animaps is a tool for creating animated maps. On Animaps, designers can create animated maps, add images, icons, and moving markers—essentially, they can let their imagination run wild to show movement or the progression of events over time: the expansion of a business network across cities, the extension of a delivery zone, or the stages of a journey. The finished map can be shared with others in video format—the service generates an animation based on a text description of the task.
The free plan allows you to export videos in 1080p, but with a watermark; paid plans start at $9.90 per month and remove the watermark. It’s worth checking the service’s features and terms yourself on the website, as they are subject to change.
Scribble Maps
Another interesting map-building tool that lets you create your own maps and add custom symbols and tokens. Just sign in and start creating. With the Scribble Maps builder, you can literally draw a unique map of an area, as well as:
- place text and icons on the map;
- give the map the look you want;
- calculate the distance between points, and more.
You can then send the map to friends, save it as a PDF, or export it as a layout to embed on a website. All of the map tools listed above are free, but if you, as a designer, need more features, sign up for a PRO account. With the paid version, you can import KML and SHP files, as well as individual map elements.
ZeeMaps
ZeeMaps, a free tool for creating interactive maps, allows designers to easily create a unique map for their layout. The service does not require registration and offers both a free and a premium version. In ZeeMaps, you can choose colors for countries (cities, regions) and add unique markers.
Interestingly, this map builder even lets you embed videos on the map. You can experiment with embedding video and audio markers. This feature will help you give your map a distinctive look.
OpenMapTiles account on GitHub
This resource offers a wide range of features for virtually any type of project. Here’s one example of a resource that has compiled a vast collection of ready-made vector maps of nearly all regions and even streets from various GitHub repositories. Designers simply need to sign up, and an unlimited number of different maps will be available for download.
Modern map editing capabilities go far beyond simply creating a pretty image for a layout. Now we can customize maps for users of a specific product and effectively implement the desired design into the product.
Google Maps Styling Wizard
Google Maps Styling Wizard is a great solution from Google for customizing maps, which can be used for both web and mobile apps. The map style is created and edited in the Google Cloud Console using a Map ID.
There are several pre-made themes available, and you can also configure a wide range of specific settings—roads, neighborhoods, bodies of water, parks, and more. Conveniently, you only need to connect the Map ID to your page or app—any style changes made in the console are immediately reflected on the map, without having to rewrite the code every time you need to adjust the style of an existing map.
For one of our travel projects, we styled the map using the brand’s warm colors, cleaned up the layers by removing unnecessary details, and made the parks more prominent.
Mapbox
This is an extremely powerful set of tools for working with maps, offering countless possibilities for designers and even more for developers. Many companies, such as Tinder, CNN, and IBM, use Mapbox in their projects.
A great example of this can be found at https://map.onesoil.ai—the project shows all agricultural fields in Europe and the Americas, complete with data on crops and yield levels.
Conclusion
Mind mapping software offers solutions that help teams overcome creative blocks and find inspiration by visually representing ideas and establishing connections between complex concepts.
Concept map creators serve as guides through the labyrinths of information, simplifying the process of finding valuable ideas. When people share a common space for exchanging ideas, the entire team taps into the power of collective thinking, taking the ideation process to unprecedented heights.
If you need tocreate a custom design, develop a service, or build a native or cross-platform app for a transportation company, please contact us. Our specialized team has over 16 years of experience developing solutions for medium and large businesses in the logistics sector. We’d be happy to bring your idea to life!
