The Hand-Drawn Map Style

Here at MapBox Mania we love some of the custom map styles that OpenStreetMap developers have designed. So today we want to share three of our favorite custom map styles created with OpenStreetMap map tiles.


The Hand Drawn Map of Toulouse uses TileMill to customize the look of OpenStreetMap to create a beautiful hand-drawn styled map. It is the lovingly created detail on this map that help make it so special. From the post-it note themed labels to the hand-sketched textures it is easy to actually mistake this for a real hand-drawn map.

The map's creator Karl Azémar has also published an interesting post about how he created the hand-drawn style (in French).


Space Station Earth is a gorgeous science fiction themed map created with MapBox. The map changes city names to space colonies, uses custom textures for road and building borders and uses over-sized markers for stores, parks, and other points of interest to simulate city lights.


Stamen's Watercolor Map is rightly one of the most popular map styles. I've even seen this one popping up in maps developed with the Google Maps API, swapping out the Google Map tiles for this beautiful OpenStreetMap. If you like the Watercolor Map style you should also have a look at Oregon State University's Crinkled Watercolor Map.