In a fast-paced newsroom, timing is everything. When breaking news hits, journalists and producers need to get accurate, visually compelling maps onto screens and feeds immediately. Every click, drag, and search query stands between your story and your audience.
That’s why we’re incredibly excited to roll out a major workflow upgrade to our location maps: Preloaded Map Templates.
From today, map designers can bake core geographic elements like custom markers and regional highlights directly into standard templates. Instead of forcing producers to manually search for, drop, and style the same assets every single time a map is generated, those foundational pieces will be waiting for them the moment they hit “Use template”
See how it works for producers. The moment they select a template, the baseline regions and brand markers are already loaded, allowing them to start mapping the story instantly.
How It Works: Design Once, Deploy Instantly
With this update, we are making the template workflow significantly more capable. When creating or configuring a global map template, designers can now embed standard interactive elements as permanent defaults:
- Persistent Brand Pins: Embed default icons, logos, or labeled points of interest directly on the template canvas.
- Pre-Bounded Regions: Lock in country, state, county, or custom area borders with preset transparencies, lines, and brand-approved colors.
- Clean Slate for Producers: When a journalist selects the template, the map spawns instantly with those default assets baked in. They can immediately focus on layering their story-specific elements or writing text descriptors.
See the new workflow in action below. This quick walkthrough shows a designer setting up a standard template with Italy pre-highlighted and Rome already marked. Watch how a producer opens this pre-loaded map and immediately starts building the story without any baseline setup.
Pro-Tip for News Directors & Designers: Create separate templates tailored to your frequent beats. For example, build a “National News” template with the federal capital and national borders automatically emphasized, and a separate “Metro Report” template pre-populated with your standard local district borders and station studio pins.
Zero-Effort Branding, Unmatched Speed-to-Air
By shifting the burden of building geographic baseline frames from the individual content producer back into the template layer, this update drives three massive wins across your media operation:
- Flawless Brand Consistency: No more off-brand pins or slightly incorrect color fills on air. Designers style the template once, and the branding is locked down permanently.
- Fewer Mistakes: Eliminates the risk of a producer accidentally misplacing a critical marker or drawing the wrong county lines under tight broadcast time pressures.
- Unmatched Speed-to-Air: Shaves precious minutes off map generation times, ensuring your newsroom gets visual context on-air ahead of the competition.
Ready to upgrade your workflow?
Preloaded Map Templates are now live and fully available inside your template design suite. Head to your design tools to update your primary location map templates today!
