An Interview with City Map Art Print Designers Mapplyco.

Scott and Ian from Mapplyco Map Prints chat to us about traveling, special locations and inspirations that helped them both create these beautiful city map prints.  They join us at The Underdog Print Shop with some stunning city wall art from around the world.

Read on to find out what they had to say!

Mapplyco blog hero image

Hello Mapply and Welcome to The Underdog Print Shop! We are really chuffed to have you on board with your awesome map prints.  What drew us to the maps was the clean, illustrative style of the designs.  How did you come up with the idea of Mapply and what inspired you to draw and sell city maps specifically? 

Myself and business partner Ian (who also happens to be my brother-in-law) are pretty avid travelers, so maps, places and interesting parts of the world were always at the front of my mind when thinking about a new venture. Personally speaking, I had in the past bought vintage maps and thought we could work a modern spin on this with more colour and vibrancy - so Mapply was born!

We are big fans of the Manchester Print (Obviously) and looked closely at it for all the little nooks and crannies we have been whilst living here.  Does it take a lot of research to get all the map correct?  Can you sum up the process used in producing them?

We use open source map data to give us the foundation for our prints - so we try and keep as much detail in there as possible. But where the magic comes is our detail around only highlighting the interesting bits, removing lots of noise from the maps and bringing them to life with our choices of colour combinations that help contrast and bring out the features of the prints.

Berlin City Map Print

Tell us a story from a visit to one of the cities in the collection! Go on :) 

There are so many! One of my best memories of Lisbon where after lots of food and plenty of drinks, myself and some pals were befriended by an eager group of Portuguese people who took us around some of the local bars and attractions of the city. After a while, we all hopped into taxis and headed out of the city. Things got a little bit weird when we thought we were going to get murdered - but all turned out ok - we arrived at this huge warehouse rave, which was CRAMMED full of people - the place was incredible. It was the biggest techno festival in Portugal. So that was pretty amazing as we had no idea about it.

The night didn't end so great, however - when I arrived back to our Airbnb at 6 in the morning. On the way in a passed some chap leaving our apartment block and went to sleep. Only later that morning, when the others came back, did I realize each of our apartments had been robbed, so either we were set up or it was a very strange coincidence!

Have you guys ever designed world maps as well cities?

We haven't got on to world maps just yet - but its something certainly on our radar. You'll be the first to know :) 

Tokyo Art Print

Out of all the designs, which ones do you consider special for any reason?  Don't be shy :) 

I think the Leith, (Edinburgh) map we have on our website in Dark Grey/ Yellow is my favorite, because its what got us started and we are quite well known locally for this. Also, we both live in Leith, so are obviously a bit biased. I also really like the Scandinavian cities or anything with interesting coastlines as you get a nice colour contrast of land vs sea.

Do you take requests? For example, if someone asked you for a quaint town in Wales, would you be able to do it? 

Pretty much - if you wanted a custom map and we don't have it already, we can make it for you. Super small rural locations don't tend to look so good if there isn't much road detail.

Finally - We have to ask,  What's your favorite film and why!?

Scott - Hmm its a tough one - there are so many. I'm a bit of a WW2 buff, so I would probably say Saving Private Ryan - but I'm not sure what that says about me.

North West Map Prints

You can find more from Mapplyco at www.mapply.co or on Underdog Print Shop of course! You can also find us on Instagram at @mapplyco.

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