Materials & Sizes

Every MAPVIE poster is printed at 300 dpi from the design you made, on paper, canvas or behind a frame. Here is exactly what arrives.

A MAPVIE map poster of New York City on fine art matte paper, partly rolled

Fine Art Matte Paper

A heavyweight 230 gsm matte paper, printed with archival pigment inks on giclée printers. Matte means no glare — you can hang it opposite a window and still read every detail.

The image is printed edge to edge, with no white border, so the poster is exactly the size you ordered. Prints ship rolled in a sturdy tube.

The corners of three solid wood frames: black, natural and white

Premium Wooden Frames

100% solid wood, handcrafted and assembled for each order. The visible face is about ⅝–¾″ (16–20 mm) wide and the frame about ⅞–1¼″ (22–32 mm) deep, depending on the lab that makes it — thin enough to set off the map without competing with it.

The glazing is inlaid acrylic, not glass: clearer than you would expect, lighter to hang, and it does not arrive in pieces.

Three colors: black, white and natural light wood. Framed prints are available from 8×10″ up to 30×40″.

The corner of a gallery wrapped canvas, the map continuing around its side

Gallery Wrapped Canvas

Printed directly onto poly-cotton canvas with the same archival inks, then stretched by hand over solid pine stretcher bars. The image continues around the sides, so there is nothing to frame and nothing to finish — it hangs as it arrives.

  • 0.75″ deep up to 12×16″
  • 1.5″ deep from 16×20″ up to 30×40″
Size guide: the poster sizes from 8×10″ to 36×48″ beside a person 5′6″ tall

Sizes

Fifteen sizes, portrait or landscape. The inch sizes are the standard American ones, so a ready-made frame will fit if you order the print on its own. The A sizes are the international standard used across Europe.

  • Inches: 8×10, 11×14, 12×16, 16×20, 18×24, 20×28, 20×30, 24×36, 28×40, 30×40, 36×48
  • A series: A4, A3, A2, A1

The world map is sold from 16×20″ upwards, and adds three larger sheets of its own: 48×32″, and two panoramas at 40×20″ and 60×30″.

Not every size exists in every material — the largest sizes are print or canvas only, and the editor will tell you which combinations we make as you choose them.

The MAPVIE studio open on a laptop, with the finished poster framed on the wall behind it

Printing the digital file yourself

If you order the printable file instead of a print, you receive a PNG at 300 dpi, at the exact size you designed — a 16×20″ design arrives as a 4800 × 6000 pixel file. There are no crop marks and no bleed: the file is the artwork, trimmed exactly.

At a print shop

  • Ask them to print at 100%. “Scale to fit” and “fit to page” both add a margin and shrink the map.
  • Ask for borderless or full bleed printing. Without it you will get a white edge that is not part of the design.
  • Matte paper, 200 gsm or heavier, gives the closest result to our own prints.
  • The file is sRGB. Ask them not to auto-enhance, sharpen or color-correct it — the styles are already balanced for print.

At home

  • Choose the borderless setting if your printer has one, and the heaviest matte photo paper it will take.
  • Print at the file’s own size, not “fit to page”.
  • A 36×48″ file is 155 megapixels. Home printers and some photo apps will struggle with it — that size belongs at a print shop.

Framing it afterwards

Every inch size we offer is a standard frame size, so a ready-made frame will fit without a custom mount. If you want a white border around the map, ask the print shop to print the file onto a larger sheet rather than scaling it down.

Start your map