Christmas gift guide: 10 of the best maps

Nothing puts a dampner on a day’s sightseeing quite like watching your city map turn to pulp between your fingers in the rain. This one of Barcelona, however, is one of a series of city maps that are 100% waterproof and have won awards for designer Emanuele Pizzolorusso. You will never struggle to fold a map up again – simply scrunch it into a ball and stuff it in your pocket.
• £10, ribabookshops.com Photograph: Crumpled City Maps

Illustrator and mapmaker Jenni Spark’s most recent endeavour is this vibrant hand drawn map of Berlin. The impeccably detailed map features hundreds of local facts, bars, restaurants and landmarks, broken up with colourful lines depicting the city’s metro system.
• From £75 for an unframed A2 map, also available framed and A1 size. evermade.com Photograph: Evermade

A close up of Jenni Spark's hand-drawn map of Berlin.
• evermade.com Photograph: Evermade

Since launching more than a decade ago, the East London based Future Mapping Company have been redefining the functional wall map, using shimmering metallic colours and intriguing colour ways to help you reimagine the world. This map of Europe is as beautiful as it is informative, featuring capital cities, population densities and sea levels among that which it details.
• £25 for a paper print, with the option to add plastic coating for an extra £8 and magnetic coating for an additional £35. futuremaps.co.uk Photograph: Future Mapping Company

A nostalgic, sepia toned map of central Manhattan, which presents New York as it was in the 1980s. All the buildings are drawn with remarkable detail in 3D, so you can find buildings such as the Chrysler skyscraper and the Empire State building looming out of the paper. It’s enough to give you vertigo.
• £14.95, stanfords.co.uk Photograph: Stanfords

Design studio We Are Dorothy have used the titles of over 900 films to give a creative spin to this vintage style map, loosely based on the streets of Los Angeles. Cinema geeks will take great pleasure locating the avenue or boulevard named after their favourite flick, as well as perusing the A-Z key that lists all the films featured, along with their release dates and the names of the directors.
• £25, wearedorothy.com Photograph: We Are Dorothy

A close up of design studio We Are Dorothy's film map.
• wearedorothy.com Photograph: We Are Dorothy

Few maps resonate within the world of design quite as much as those used for metro systems. Colourful and iconic, they reduce a complicated web into a series of simple lines. This graphic interpretation of the Moscow transit system is a creative homage to underground map design, one of a series of metro prints from more than a dozen cities.
• £17, lineposters.com Photograph: Line Posters

A beautifully printed map and infographic giving a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, so you always know where the characters are in the story. All the characters and their movements are charted in delicate art-deco typography and each print is signed and numbered by the artist.
• £17, popchartlab.com Photograph: Pop Chart Labs

A close up of Pop Chart Lab's Great Gatsby map and infographic.
popchartlab.com Photograph: Pop Chart Labs

Artist Stephen Walter has become well known for his obsessively detailed, hand-drawn maps. This one of Liverpool is an intricate web of community knowledge with scribbled notes about local legends, history and trivia. Each print is signed and dated by the artist.
• £59.95, liverpoollove.org Photograph: Froz the Polar Bear/Stephen Walter

A close up of Stephen Walter's hand drawn map of Liverpool.
• liverpoollove.org Photograph: Froz the Polar Bear/Stephen Walter

The World Scratch Map is a fun way to keep track of your travels – it features a gold layer that you can scratch off to highlight each country you’ve visited. A panel below the map itself also lists the highest summits, lakes and other potential geographical conquests that (of course) you can also proudly scratch off, giving you a unique been-there-done-that glow.
• £17.99, stanfords.co.uk Photograph: unknown/Stanfords

And finally … whoever said Britain’s national mapping authority doesn’t like a bit of fun? Ordnance Survey are inviting you to print your own custom maps by allowing you to centre one around any location in the country. You can then create a personalised front cover photo. The map could depict the area of your favourite holiday, your local area, or a well trodden walk and it’s an ideal gift for someone who is planning an adventure.
• From £16.99, ordnancesurvey.co.uk Photograph: Ordnance Survey © Crown Copyrig/Ordnance Survey