Map Maker
Click countries to highlight them, choose a projection, zoom to a region, add labels and export a 4K PNG or an SVG for your YouTube video, thumbnail, Short or slide. Built by a map-animation editor, runs entirely in your browser.
- Free for commercial use
- Up to 8K PNG · SVG
- 8 projections incl. globe
- Share by link
Map editor
A custom map in under a minute
- Pick your countriesClick them on the map or type a name (aliases like “UK”, “USA” or “Burma” work). Add more colour groups to compare, say, NATO members against partners, or the countries a trade route passes through.
- Frame the shotChoose a projection, a region preset or “Zoom to selection”, then set the canvas to 16:9 for a video, 9:16 for a Short, or 1:1 for a post. Use the zoom and margin sliders to leave room for your titles.
- ExportDownload a PNG at 2× (4K) or 4× (8K), or an SVG you can recolour and animate in After Effects, Illustrator or Figma. Tick “transparent” to drop the map straight over your footage.
Thumbnail tip: highlight one country in yellow on a dark map, zoom in until it fills a third of the frame, and put your text in the empty ocean side. High contrast, one focal point, readable at 200 pixels wide. That is the thumbnail formula that keeps working for geography and history channels.
Made for people who explain the world
Geography & history YouTubers
Reveal which countries border a river, fought in a war, joined an alliance or share a language. Export the base PNG, then animate the highlight in your editor, or send me the project and I will.
Economics & trade explainers
Colour-group exporters, importers and transit states. Six groups and custom labels are enough for most trade, sanction or membership maps.
Teachers & students
Blank or highlighted maps for slides, quizzes and handouts. The Light and Paper presets print cleanly; SVG scales to a projector or an A3 sheet without blur.
Travel creators & bloggers
“Countries I've visited” maps for a channel banner or a Reel, with a transparent background so it sits on your own photo.
News & newsletter writers
A clean locator map in seconds when a story breaks. Share the link with a colleague and they can recolour it without redoing the work.
Presentations & reports
Market coverage, office locations, expansion plans. Export at 4:3 or 16:9 to match the deck, keep the SVG so the designer can restyle it.
Which projection should you use?
Every flat map lies about something. Pick the lie that matters least for your story.
| Projection | Best for | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| Natural Earth | Whole-world videos and thumbnails. Modern, balanced, the default here. | Slight shape distortion near the poles. |
| Equal Earth | When relative country size is the point (population, emissions, land area). | Looks a little stretched at the edges. |
| Robinson | The classic “atlas” look; familiar to older audiences and textbooks. | Neither equal-area nor conformal, a compromise on both. |
| Winkel Tripel | National Geographic's choice; very low overall distortion. | Curved edges leave odd corners on a 16:9 canvas. |
| Mercator | Zoomed-in regions, navigation, matching Google Maps screenshots. | Greenland looks as big as Africa. Never use it for a world map about size. |
| Miller | A Mercator that tolerates the poles; fills a rectangle neatly. | Same size lies, only slightly smaller. |
| Equirectangular | Overlaying data grids, or when you need lat/long to be straight lines. | Flat and plain; countries near the equator look squashed. |
| Globe (Orthographic) | A single country or continent reveal; cinematic, works great on 9:16. | Only half the world is visible at once, by design. |
I make map animations for a living
Most of my editing work is for geography, history, economics and geopolitics channels, and almost every project starts the same way: a still map with the right countries highlighted, in the right projection, at the right aspect ratio. Clients would send me screenshots of Google Maps, Wikipedia SVGs with the wrong colours, or a paint-bucket job in PowerPoint. Getting a clean base map used to cost twenty minutes per shot.
So I built the tool I wanted: public-domain Natural Earth borders, proper projections, a globe, colour groups, and an export that lands directly in the timeline. It runs entirely in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and it is free because a good base map is the least interesting part of a great map video.
What the tool does not do
- No animation. It makes stills. Reveals, zooms, route lines and camera moves are done in After Effects, which is the service this page sits next to.
- No city points or custom shapes yet. Countries and territories only, from Natural Earth. If you need provinces or cities, export the SVG and add them in Illustrator or Figma.
- No political judgement. Borders follow Natural Earth's de facto policy. Add your own caption where your audience expects one.
Freelance video editor specialising in map animation and documentary edits for YouTube geography, history and economics channels. More about me → · Also free: AI Metadata Remover.
Questions before you export
Country reveals, routes and geopolitical explainers
Cinematic animated maps for documentary and explainer channels, cut to your voiceover, delivered in 4K with four rounds of revisions.
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