Take Storytelling to Another Level with Piktochart’s Improved Map Visualizations

If geography is prose, maps are iconography. – Lennart Meri

Following our very well-received charts improvement on the Piktochart editor, we’re proud to roll out improvements for the ‘other half’ of our beloved visualisations: Maps!

Based on popular user requests and needs, we’ve developed more fluid and user-friendly improvements for map visualizations on Piktochart. These include state-level visualization, precise color customization for countries or states of your choice, area-value (also known as choropleth) maps, and quite literally, maps of almost all countries known on Earth! Try it out now by creating a free account.

7 Continental Regions, 237 Countries, and The Entire World Map

The maps feature is still conveniently located under the ‘Tools’ category of our left sidebar. Clicking on it, or dragging and dropping it into the canvas, will activate the following window:

With maps of 7 continental regions, 237 countries and the entire world map available for use, it just got way more convenient to visualize any geological information on Piktochart. We’ve implemented a search function for you to easily sift through the available maps on the editor, so don’t worry about being overwhelmed!

Once you’ve decided on which map you’d like to use, simply click ‘insert map’ or ‘edit map’ according to what you’d like to perform next. Even if you have inserted your map, you can still edit it simply by double-clicking on the map itself.

Edit colors to further enhance your data visualization

As you hop into the editing interface, you will be greeted with a cleaner interface that hosts several new subfeatures.

Being able to change your map color and country or state borders color has always been vital to represent data visually, and we’re keeping that. Now, we’ve added on a toggle to show or hide border lines! Depending on how you want to visualize your map, being able to hide the border of the countries and states might help you present your information more clearly.

What’s the best new thing about colors for maps? You can now select specific states/countries on your map and change their colors individually too! Being able to personalize your map so that it can better fit into your infographic is important, and we believe that this step forward in greater color customization will certainly help you do so.

Select locations relevant to your data, and remove unnecessary clutter

It’s easy to customize the map according to the data you want to present. In the editing interface, simply click on the countries or states present in the map, or alternatively in the data grid, to select them.

You can then have the option to hide these selected countries or states, leaving the relevant ones on the map. Simply select the hidden ones from the data grid and press ‘Show’ to have them reappear on your map!

Visualize your data more precisely with the Area-Value Map

The newly added area-value map, or commonly known as the choropleth map, can be found under the Data Visualization tab of the map editor.

Area-value maps allow you to represent the various segments of your data value through color gradients on the map. As an example in the screenshot above, a darker shade of blue was used to represent the lower population segments on the map, whereas a lighter blue was used to represent the opposite. This visualization definitely helps people understand your presentation in a glance! Toggling the Area-Value Map active opens to you a variety of customization options.

First of all, you can choose which column of data you would like to present through the area-value map. Once that is selected, the countries or states of the map will then be categorized into five segments based on your data, each represented by a different shade of color depending on the area-value start and end colors you pick. The ‘start’ color is usually the data segment with the smallest values, whereas the ‘end’ color is the opposite. The shades in between will form a color gradient for each segment of data.

Moreover, you can opt to show or hide the legends of the map, as well as position the legend to various positions in respect to the map.

What happens to my existing maps?

We’re assuming this question will be the first to pop into your mind. Take a deep breath and let it out.. because everything is going to be fine! Your existing maps will stay the same. Still functional, still editable, but take note that existing maps’ editing interface will also be as the old one, and hence without the new features. If you’d like to apply the new features, you will have to create a new map and apply your desired changes.

Here’s to lots and lots of new, beautiful maps being created with Piktochart! If you have any questions, feel free to tweet us @Piktochart or send an email to our lovely support team. Let us know how creative you’ve been with our revamped maps feature!

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