An area tourist map for a bike rental business

Beach Vibe Rentals & Sales rents golf carts and e-bikes in Carlsbad, California. They always get requests from customers asking where they can and can’t go with their rentals.

They had been using screenshots from Google Maps with routes and areas drawn on them, and their customers would take photos of those maps to have with them.

But they really wanted a custom map to add value for their customers, with a poster in-store to review with their customers – showing them the allowed areas and suggesting routes and points of interest. And they wanted to hand out letter-sized maps for people to take with them on their rides. I suggested they also add the map to Avenza Maps, so people could use it within the app on their phones.

The first thing I did was to create a layout draft, showing the coastline and roads north to Oceanside Harbor and south to Encinitas. The area between the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the map is what would show on a letter-sized page. The areas above and below that would show on a 24″x36″ poster (because of the different ratios).

Once the coverage area was established, I decided to use two Illustrator files. The first would be the full layout in one image – a tall, narrow artboard.

That’s the layout I used for Avenza Maps. I also used it as the source for the second Illustrator file, which had layout below. They wanted to zoom in closer than in the first layout draft, so I thought having the coverage area split into north and south on one page was the best way to show that.

To get this layout, I placed the map from the first file into this file as a linked image: once on the left and once on the right. I positioned those images until they fit nicely into half the 24″x36″ poster artboard with a bit of overlap. They are linked images, so that whenever I make a change on the source file, it updated this second file.

I then created a second artboard – 25.5″x33″ (8.5″x11″ enlarged 300%) – so I could make sure that all important areas still show on the slightly wider but shorter layout for their handouts.

This image shows those two overlapping artboards. After I added the map to Avenza Maps, I got a QR code that I added to this print layout, so customers can scan that on their phones to easily access the digital map.

Beach Vibe was very happy with the finished products, and they sent me wonderful photos of it in their shop

If you’re in the Carlsbad area, check out Beach Vibe Rentals & Sales, and get the digital map on Avenza Maps!

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