How it works
From a place you love to a print you keep.
Every Contour is drawn from real terrain data and composed like a fine-art map. No generic templates, no stock imagery.
Pick your place
Choose any point in New Zealand: a summit, a hut, the river mouth where you learned to fish. We pull the elevation tile for that exact bounding box.
We render the terrain
From the raw DEM we derive crisp contour lines and soft hillshade ourselves: 1 m LiDAR detail where it exists, the national 8 m model everywhere else. Scale bar, north arrow and elevation labels come standard.
Overlay your route
Upload a GPX file and we trace your exact line over the map: the tramp, the trail run, the ride. Multiple tracks in one file are welcome. This one follows the Wilberforce.
Choose size & finish
Pick A2 or A3, portrait or landscape, and one of three themes. Add a title block with your own words and coordinates.
Read your map
What each thing on the print means.
A Contour is a working map, not a picture of one. Here is what you are looking at.
- Contour lines
- Each line joins points of equal height above sea level. Lines packed tight mean steep ground; lines spread wide mean gentle. We tune the interval for your exact area so the land reads clearly at your scale.
- Hillshade
- The soft shadow under the lines, computed from the terrain itself with light from the northwest. It is what makes ridges and valleys lift off the paper.
- The elevation data
- One-metre LiDAR where New Zealand has flown it, the national 8 m model everywhere else. The same Toitū Te Whenua LINZ surveys that engineers and surveyors work from.
- Scale bar & north arrow
- Drawn to your map's true scale and orientation, standard on every print. You could navigate off it.
- The title block
- Your words, the place name and the real coordinates of your centre point, set like a survey sheet.
- Your route
- A GPX file from your watch or phone draws your exact line over the terrain. Several tracks in one file are fine; they draw as one journey.
Terrain, streets, or both.
Every place can be drawn three ways. Pick the one that tells your story.
Terrain
Contours and hillshade only. The classic. Right for peaks, ranges and anywhere the land does the talking.
Streets
The road grid, parks and building footprints of a city or town. Right for the street you grew up on.
Both
Contours underneath, streets on top. Right for hill suburbs and towns pressed against ranges, which in New Zealand is most of them.
Paper & ink
Printed like it matters.
A map this detailed deserves better than poster stock. Every Contour is printed with archival pigment inks on heavyweight archival matte, the paper galleries choose when a print has to hang for decades without fading or yellowing. It costs us several times what standard poster paper does. You can tell the moment you unroll it.
We render at 300 dpi, so the finest contour lines stay crisp with your nose against the glass, not just from across the room. A person in Christchurch checks every print before it goes out, rolled in a tube, never folded.
- Archival pigment inks
- Pigment sits in the paper rather than on it. It is the difference between a print that lasts and a poster that fades in a sunny room.
- Heavyweight archival matte
- A thick, acid-free fine-art stock with real texture under your fingers. Made to outlast the frame it hangs in.
- Checked by hand
- Colour, line weight and text are inspected on the physical print before it is rolled and posted. Nothing ships that we would not hang ourselves.
Sizes & pricing
Simple, honest pricing.
Two sizes, one price each. Free NZ shipping.
A3
297 × 420 mm
From $89
Perfect for a single peak or a day walk.
A2
420 × 594 mm
From $129
The statement piece. Room for a full range and a long route.
The print itself
- Heavyweight archival fine-art stock, chosen to hold fine linework and deep blacks for decades. Not poster paper.
- Pigment giclée, printed by a fine-art lab in Christchurch.
- Shipped rolled in a heavy-wall tube. Never folded.
- Arrives damaged? We reprint it free. Send a photo, we handle the rest.
Standard A3 and A2 sizes, so off-the-shelf frames from any homeware store fit.
Free NZ shipping · every print includes free rendering revisions until it’s right. Design your print →