There's a little globe in our Seattle workshop that's been with my family since I was a kid. In the late 90s my mom wanted to get it updated; a new ball for an old stand. This was the early days of the Internet, so to find the manufacturer she had to go to the local public library and pull up a printed directory for Chicago, where the globemaker was based. She got them on the phone, and somehow, (there may have been a bribe involved), convinced them to let her sell a few globes on the side of a foreign films website she'd launched.

Globe sales took off. That became 1worldglobes.com, I believe it to be the first online globe specialty shop in the world. I came on board in 2000 to help and we formed worldmapsonline.com. I knew a little about this new Internet thing, just enough to be useful. We thought, a store for world maps, but it will be 'online' so we named it as such. Looking back, it made sense then but today I sometimes wonder if the 'online' part gives the wrong impression for a company that deals in printed maps.

That was over 25 years ago. Somewhere along the way I stopped just running the business and started actually caring about the product. Maps turned out to be way more interesting than I expected. There's more to them than most people realize. More history, more politics, more human story baked into something most people treat as wallpaper. They still surprise me.

In 2010 we got our first wide-format printer. That changed everything. We went from middlemen, taking orders, shipping other people's products, to actually making the things. We could finally say yes to custom sizes, specific materials, projects that didn't fit neatly into a catalog. That's when the business started to become what it is today.

Over the next 14 years we built out a real production workshop here in Seattle: Four wide-format printers, finishing equipment, an in-house cartography team. We print everything from standard wall maps to custom murals sized for specific walls in specific rooms.

What we're good at

We have an obsessively high standard for print quality and materials, throughout our product range. It's the thing I'm least willing to compromise on, and exactly what you want when considering a nice map to display.

Custom work. If you need something specific, a particular region, a certain size, historical accuracy, a map that fits an awkward wall, we can usually make it happen. We've developed our own line of detailed wall maps in-house and handle custom requests the same way we handle everything else: by actually knowing what we're doing.

What we're like to work with

We're a small team. When you email or use chat, you're talking directly to someone who makes these things, not a support layer removed from the actual work. You'll get real answers from people who know this stuff.

We're a specialty map printer. That's all we do here. We won't have your order out the door in four hours. But if you have a real question about what map is right for your space, your wall, your use case, that's exactly what we're here for. I also make videos about maps. This history, the politics, as well as the stuff most people never notice. If that sounds interesting, you can find them on YouTube

Three people. Four wide-format printers. Great map artwork and excellent materials.

Paul - Owner, World Maps Online, Seattle