Tip: How To Make Free Maps For Your Blog or Website

How do you make a world map (or regional / country maps) with data that you can use on your blog or website? Google Maps is obviously one tool that can be used, but I do not like the interface and the colours. The customization of features is also somewhat limited. This tip shows you some good tools (online and offline) that you can use to generate and customize such maps.

1) Gunn Interactive

This is a very good tool to depict your data on a world map. You can load your own data by pasting it into the site (e.g. by copying from an Excel file or similar formats). You can then edit data (you have to double-check the country name as it may not match the exact country name listed in the site).

This tool is quite easily customized – you can set the appearance, change the colours corresponding to data values, whether to display the key / legend, whether to show country labels and finally whether to save as JPG or PNG. One downside, though, is that you cannot save the data loaded for the next use.

It is free and easy to use, and shared under the Creative Commons - you are free to share and generate derivative works, with attribution by providing a link to the site. See the examples produced by this tool - the Christian map, Muslim map and Freedom map.

2) freemap.jp

Africa map, random countries

This is another site with a number of editable maps – including a world map and regional maps. You can choose to highlight different countries with different colours, whether to show the coast lines, borders or country names, among other things. [The tool seems to be able to take in and depict data by each country, but this feature does not seem to work.] Similar to the previous tool, you can save the map as a PNG file, but you cannot save the settings for future use.

This site also has a number of blank maps for download - including world maps, regional maps as well as country maps. These maps are free, but the site does not specify any specific sharing arrangements. 

3) StatPlanet

StatPlanet is a free software for creating interactive maps (and graphs) that are customizable. You need to download and install it, and load your data in the form of Excel files. It takes a bit of time to get used to initially, so it is less straightforward than the first two tools. It is more powerful though, and it is relatively easy to use once you are used to it. See an example (also in the graphic here) produced by this tool - the Crime Statistics(homicide rates) map.

4) Presentation Magazine

This site provides a series of editable vector maps in the form of powerpoint templates. There are world maps, regional maps as well as country maps (see for example the US map on the right). These are all free for use, but be sure to check the website and templates for detailed terms. One thing to note is that some of the maps may have missing information (e.g. country borders, etc), but on the whole it is a good tool to use if you do not need 100% accuracy.

5) Other vector maps

Wikipedia World Map

Here are some other resources where you can get free vector maps (basically they are just graphics), but do note the terms and conditions of use.

• Wikipedia World Map (this is in the public domain)
• Vecteezy (this has a good number of maps, but do note the terms of use)

6) US Geological Survey

Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

This form-based simple map generator (called Map-It) is a slightly different tool from the ones above. It takes longitude / latitude pairs as input and plots them on a map along with land/sea and political boundaries. You can set the map bounds about 10% larger than the bounds of the entered data points. 

The good thing about this tool is that you can generate a map of any region in the world, as long as you have the longitude and latitude (which you can get from places such as here). 

The downside of this tool is that you need to figure out all the longitude and latitude yourself (though they provide you the numbers if you need to plot the whole world). Another downside is that the colours are fixed, and you cannot change them. The tool is free to use, but do check out their terms of use (e.g. you have to credit USGS).

Map: The Freedom of Countries

This map shows the freedom in the world – the freedom ratings by country in 2011. There is a large cluster of countries in the Middle East / North Africa, Russia / Central Asia, China and Indo-China where the countries are rated “not free”. Note that these are ratings by Freedom House on political rights and civil liberties for the year 2011, which take into account the events of the Arab Spring.

Data Source: Freedom House; Generated with this

If you compare this with the Christian map and the Muslim map, you can see that many of the majority-Christian nations are rated “free”, while many of the Muslim (the Middle East / North Africa) countries are rated “not free”. It may be a coincidence – or due to the lack of freedom in these countries, the population does not profess any other religion other than the official one. Of course, ratings (as well as professions of religion) have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Find out how to make maps similar to the one above.

Data Source: Freedom House; Map: Generated by me

Map: Christian Population in the World

This map shows the number of Christians as a percentage of the total population in each country. As you can see, the countries with large percentage of Christians are in Europe, North America, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Again, the map shows the number of Christians as a percentage of the total population in each country, not the number of Christians in each country.

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Generated with this

There is a large swath of countries in the Middle East / North Africa, South Asia, North Asia and Southeast Asia, where the percentage of Christians is low. The populations of these countries are mainly from other religions, such as Islam (Middle East / North Africa, Indonesia), Hinduism (India) or Buddhism (Japan, maybe China). The contrast with the countries with high percentage of Muslims can be seen if you refer to the Muslim map of the world.

Find out how to make maps similar to the one above.

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Map: Generated by me

Map: Muslim Population in the World

This map shows the number of Muslims as a percentage of the total population in each country. As you can see, there is a large concentration of countries in the Middle East / North Africa / Central Asia belt where the country percentage of Muslims is highest (usually more than 95%). The other large cluster is in the Southeast Asia region, including Indonesia and Malaysia.

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Generated with this

The map shows the number of Muslims as a percentage of the total population in each country, not the number of Muslims in each country. For example, there is a large population of Muslims in China, but this is small compared to the total population in China. See also the Christian map and the Freedom map.

Find out how to make maps similar to the one above. 

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Map: Generated by me

Map: Crime Statistics - Homicide Rates

This map shows the homicide rates in the world, by country. The data is from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, where intentional homicide is defined as “unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person”. It should be the technical term for what we know as murder.

Data Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime

From the map, we can see that the countries with the highest homicide rates are those from Africa (except the Northern parts) and some countries of Latin America (Brazil, Mexico). The countries with the lowest homicide rates are Canada, most parts of Europe, North Africa (surprisingly), Australia, New Zealand, China (perhaps because of the large population and stringent laws) and Japan. Of course, there are many small countries that we cannot see on the map that may have much worse or better homicide rates.

Find out how to make maps similar to the one above. 

Data Source: UNODC; Map: Generated by me