Map Design Platform

The guys over at MapBox have come up with something that will save many of us the hassle of making maps look good. They’ve created TileMill, a modern map design platform that enables designers to easily create map designs using custom data. The tool is built on the open-source map-rendering library Mapnik and covers a variety of maps, from globe to street level.

Selecting exactly what TileMill should display is easy. Styles, markers, heat maps, you name it: TileMill will render them accordingly. The instant preview allows you to target specific areas and styles using styles.mss and labels.mss, which is the intuitive Carto language (similar to CSS). You can export your maps to PNG, PDF and MBTiles formats. The tool can be used on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows (using VirtualBox). How much more useful can it get?