How the studio works, how to get your route in, and what happens after you buy. Open a question to read the answer.
Pick a route: a Strava activity, a GPX file or a race course. The studio draws it straight away. Everything after that lives in four tabs, in the order most people work: Theme for the overall look, Colours to adjust any colour it chose, Layout for the shape of the page, and Content for what it actually says. Designing is free and unlimited. You only pay when you want the file or a print.
If you saw a poster on the gallery you liked, open that one instead: every poster there is a link into the studio with its own filter, layout, typography and colours already set. It arrives on the race it was made from, with your own name and time still to fill in, and everything stays editable.
A theme is one click that sets every colour on the poster at once: the route, the map background, roads, water, parks, buildings, trails, the text and the stats. Colours is where you change any one of them afterwards. They sit side by side because they're one decision at two grains, and “Reset to theme defaults” always takes you back to the theme you picked.
23 themes, in 3 groups: Artistic, Light, Dark. Each one re-draws the map, the route and the type together, so they're whole designs rather than colour swaps.
It rolls a fresh palette: one background, one route colour, and the rest derived from those two so the route never sinks into the map and the title never turns unreadable. Click it again for another roll, and “Reset to theme defaults” comes back to your last roll, not to where you started.
Three arrangements, each in portrait or landscape. Classic sets the date, city, activity and stats in a band under the map: stacked and centred in portrait, side by side in landscape, which leaves the map more of the page. Magazine runs the map full-bleed with the title over it, like a cover. Medallion cuts the map into a circle with the city and stats set below. The gallery shows all three on one route, side by side, so you can see what each does with the page.
Each layout has a title budget, roughly what fits on two lines at that size: 52 characters in Classic, 32 in Magazine, 34 in Medallion. Magazine's is the tightest because its title is the biggest thing on the page. Its cover title sizes itself to the name: a short city is set at the full size, a longer one smaller so it still fits on one line. Only a name too long even for that takes a second line, set smaller again, and a single very long word is trimmed rather than run past the edge. If a long city name won't fit, try the Grandstand typography: it's the condensed one, and it holds names the others wrap.
Four typography themes, each a complete type system rather than a single font:
They're independent of the theme and the layout, so any combination works. All four are set on the same poster on the gallery, cropped to the lettering, because a face is too small to judge on a whole poster the size of a thumbnail.
Four lines: the location, the activity name, the athlete and the date. Each can be edited or switched off entirely. They start filled in from the route itself, so a poster is finished before you touch anything. The location is the city, not the full address; that's deliberate, because a city reads as a place and an address reads as a label.
Three headline stats (distance, time and pace), plus elevation, average and max speed, heart rate, calories, energy, cadence, power, elapsed time, max elevation, temperature and gear. Every value is editable, so you can correct one or type it in yourself, and the km/mi switch re-labels them all. Some layouts show fewer extras than others; the studio tells you when a selection won't appear.
Yes. Unlock the padlock beside the zoom controls, then drag the map to reposition the route inside the frame and zoom to tighten or widen the crop. What you see is what prints.
How far you can widen depends on the route: we fetch a map area sized around it, and the controls stop at the point where the paper would run past the map rather than letting you reach a poster with a bare edge. A compact route can widen further than a sprawling one.
Framing happens in the Fit view. At Real size the poster is usually bigger than the screen, so dragging scrolls it rather than moving the map inside it, and the zoom, reset and padlock go quiet until you switch back to Fit.
Every map layer has its own switch, and each one its own colour: roads, streets, water and parks, landcover, railways, buildings and trails. Turning a layer off removes it from the poster rather than fading it, so a city can be as bare or as dense as you want it. Roads and streets are separate switches, so you can keep the through-roads, keep only the residential grid, or draw both.
“Streets” starts switched off, and it is the one to reach for first if the map looks sparse rather than busy: it draws the residential grid behind the through-roads, which on a long route is often what turns a few lines into somewhere recognisable. It is off by default because on a big city it is by far the heaviest layer to draw, so you opt into it rather than wait for it. Switch it on and it builds in as you watch, a ring at a time.
That's the preview. The file you buy has no watermark and prints at full resolution. The mark only exists so an unpaid preview can't stand in for the finished thing.
Yes, and the preview follows the size you pick, which matters more than it sounds. The three sizes are not one poster at three scales. A bigger sheet widens the subject: an A3 pulls the route back to show more of the city around it, while an A5 fills the page with the run itself and holds its smallest lettering at a size you can still read on paper. Choose the size in the studio and you are looking at the sheet you would receive. The gallery draws the three side by side at their real relative sizes, if you want to see how much bigger an A3 actually is.
There is also a Real size view, next to the zoom buttons and in the Layout tab. It draws the poster at the sheet's actual millimetres so you can see how big the lettering and the streets really are, scrolling around anything that does not fit your screen. It asks you once to hold a bank card against the screen and match its short edge. Every card is the same size, so that one measurement is what lets it be honest rather than approximate.
And a Framed preview, in the same tab, draws the poster inside a frame. Set how many millimetres your frame covers and you can see what it hides before you buy either the poster or the frame. More on choosing a frame.
Every download comes at 3508×4961 px, whichever size you composed for: 300 DPI on the largest sheet we sell, and more on a smaller one. Picking A5 costs you no resolution. Print files carry the extra bleed a trimmed edge needs.
No. Your route and every setting come back when you return. The one exception is an uploaded GPX file: those are held only for the browser session, so you'll need to upload the track again (your settings will still be there).
The preview is the proof: it's the same renderer that makes the file, so there's no surprise waiting behind the payment. If a file does come out faulty, or a print arrives damaged, we replace or refund it.
Not yet. Both get asked for, both are on the list, and neither is something we'll pretend is coming next week. If you want one of them, tell us. It's how these get prioritised.
Open the studio, choose the Strava tab and press Connect with Strava. Strava asks you to approve the connection, and your activities appear.
⚠️ On Strava's approval screen, leave the box about private activities ticked. Unticking it doesn't just hide private runs: it withholds permission to read any of your activities, so nothing loads at all. If your list comes up empty, that's almost always why: disconnect and connect again with the box ticked.
Any activity with GPS in it: runs, rides, walks, hikes, swims that were tracked outdoors. Treadmill and indoor sessions have no route to draw. Your history loads in the background, so a long back-catalogue keeps filling in while you work.
No. If you've asked Strava to hide the area around your start and finish, or to hide them everywhere, Strava gives us the route already trimmed and the poster draws what we were given. Change the setting on Strava and reconnect, and the poster follows. You can always see exactly what you'll get: the preview is the poster.
One thing worth knowing: when you connect, Strava asks whether to let us see your private activities. Allowing that also lets us see inside your hidden areas, so the route is drawn in full. If you'd rather it stayed trimmed, connect without ticking that box. Your “Only You” activities won't be available to frame, but everything else will be.
Strava tells us about new activities as they're uploaded, so it usually appears within moments. Reload the studio. If it still isn't there, check it has GPS data and that it isn't hidden by a Strava privacy setting.
Revoke access at strava.com/settings/apps. Strava tells us, and we delete your name, your tokens and every stored activity automatically. You don't have to ask us as well. Posters you've already bought aren't affected: they stay yours to download.
Strava caps how many athletes an app may connect at once. If you ever see that message, nothing is wrong with your account and nothing else has to wait: a GPX file or a race course makes exactly the same poster, with no account needed.
A GPX file is the plain-text record of a route: the trail of coordinates your watch or phone recorded. Almost everything exports one: Garmin Connect, Komoot, Suunto, Polar, Wahoo, and Strava itself (open an activity, then Export GPX). Upload it in the studio's GPX tab and it draws like any other route.
Up to 10 files at a time, 30 MB each, comfortably more than a long ultra with every second recorded. We hold them only for your browser session: close the browser and they're gone, which is why a returning design asks you to upload the track again. Keeping strangers' tracks longer than the job needs isn't a feature.
A GPX carries the route, and often not much else: heart rate, calories and power usually aren't in it. Those fields stay empty rather than being invented, and you can type the real numbers in yourself. Distance and elevation are calculated from the track.
43 courses: 31 marathons, 7 half marathons, 3 10Ks, one 10 Miles and a 5K. Filter by distance, pick the year, and the course drops into the studio like any other route, with no account, no file and no run of your own required.
Because it's the official course, not your GPS trace: the line the race was run on, without the weaving, the tunnel dropouts or the extra metres round the aid stations. It also carries no time or pace, since it isn't your run: those show as “—” until you type in your own.
Posters read “City · Distance · Year”, a factual description of a place, a distance and a date; a race that runs from one town to another names both ends. Where that still doesn't tell two races apart, the venue or the event's own name follows in brackets. We never use an organiser's logo, and never a sponsor's name, so a title here won't match the branding on your race bib.
Tell us which one and we'll look at adding it, and there's a form for exactly that. In the meantime, a GPX export of the course (most organisers publish one) makes the same poster today.
Printed and framed posters aren't available to order yet. The answers below describe what they'll be when they launch. Digital files are on sale today, and the studio is free to use either way.
A print-ready PDF at 300 DPI or better, watermark-free, sized for the format you picked, yours to print at home, at a print shop, or anywhere you like.
It is a PDF because that is what a print shop can act on without asking you anything: the page carries its real size in millimetres and marks exactly where to trim, so "print this at A3" is the whole conversation. If you would rather have the image on its own, the same poster is also a PNG at the same resolution: change the ".pdf" on the end of your download link to ".png".
The file is a little larger than the sheet on purpose: it carries 3 mm of bleed on every side. That spare edge is real map, and it is what a print shop trims into when it prints right to the edge. Nothing you designed lives out there.
Every size, measured:
No. A print buys the print, and the file is a separate purchase: they're priced independently because they're different products. If you want both, you'll be able to buy both together once the prints open; the file arrives immediately and the print follows by post.
Three sizes, each as a poster on its own or ready-framed:
They are composed for their own sheets rather than scaled from one another, so it is worth switching between them in the studio before you choose. The picker is in the Layout tab, drawn to scale, with a shortcut beside the zoom buttons.
Almost certainly not. Every poster keeps its titles, stats and border at least 11 mm clear of the trim, so a frame that overlaps the print by up to 11 mm on each edge covers nothing but paper.
That overlap is usually called the rebate or the inset, and most frames cover somewhere between 5 and 12 mm. If a listing doesn't say, the mount or backing board that comes with the frame usually does, and you can measure it on a frame you already own.
Past 11 mm the lip starts to reach the printing, and the small map credit along the foot is the first thing to go. What it reaches after that depends on the layout you picked, which is why the preview draws it rather than guessing. Nothing is cropped from the map itself, which runs to the edge by design.
You can see it before you buy either one. The studio's Layout tab has a Framed preview: set the millimetres your frame covers and the poster is drawn inside it, with the visible print size underneath. The gallery shows the same thing at a few common depths, if you want a look before you start.
It is already there. Every file carries 3 mm of bleed on all four sides, and the trim line is the sheet size you picked: 210 × 297 mm for an A4 file that measures 216 × 303.
Ask them to print it as supplied and trim to the sheet size. They should not scale it up to make their own bleed, because the file already has it.
Nothing that matters sits near the cut either. We keep every title, stat and border at least 5 mm inside the trim, so a millimetre of wander in their guillotine costs you nothing.
The exact numbers, if they ask: A5 is 154.0 × 216.0 mm trimming to 148.0 × 210.0 mm; A4 is 216.0 × 303.0 mm trimming to 210.0 × 297.0 mm; A3 is 303.0 × 426.0 mm trimming to 297.0 × 420.0 mm.
Most home printers cannot reach the edge of the paper, so they leave a white margin whatever file you give them. That comes from the printer, not from us.
The way around it is to print on the next size up at 100% (not "fit to page") and trim down to the size you bought. An A4 poster printed on A3 and cut to 210 × 297 mm gives you a true edge-to-edge print, with the design exactly where you placed it.
It's yours for personal use: print it, hang it, give it to the person who ran it. What it isn't is stock artwork: reselling or redistributing it isn't covered. The full wording is in the terms.
Nothing. Connect a route, restyle it as many times as you like, come back tomorrow and carry on. You pay only when you want the file or a print.
The digital file is €6.95, one flat price whatever size you choose.
When the prints open, printed posters will run from €16.95 to €27.95, and framed from €29.95 to €54.95, depending on size. The price you see is the price you pay.
Yes. Over €60 in the Netherlands and €75 in the rest of the EU, delivery is on us. The whole order counts towards it, digital files included, so a file bought alongside a print can be what tips it over.
A discount code can't take it away either. The threshold is measured before any code comes off, so an order that has earned free delivery keeps it however much the code then saves you.
Yes. There's a “Have a discount code?” link in your cart, just under the order summary. Enter the code there and the total updates before you go anywhere near payment. Some codes only cover part of an order, for example prints but not digital files, and the cart shows you exactly what came off.
One code per order. If you enter a second one it replaces the first, so use whichever saves you more.
Printed and framed posters aren't available to order yet. The answers below describe what they'll be when they launch. Digital files are on sale today, and the studio is free to use either way.
The Netherlands and the rest of the EU, 27 countries in all, carried by PostNL. Every order is checked, packed and posted here by hand.
It depends on the parcel: a couple of A5 posters go through a letterbox, a framed A3 needs a box, and the fee follows what your order actually needs rather than a flat guess. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay, and it's free over €60 (€75 in the EU).
We print and dispatch within 2 working days. After that it's PostNL: in the Netherlands normally the next delivery day (they deliver Monday to Saturday), and typically 2–5 working days elsewhere in the EU: a little quicker to Belgium and Germany, up to a week or more to Greece, Ireland and the islands.
Those are PostNL's own indications rather than guarantees; once a parcel is abroad it's in another country's postal system, and neither we nor PostNL control what happens there.
Yes. You'll get an email with a tracking link when your parcel is posted, and another when it's delivered.
Then we make it right: a replacement or a refund. Get in touch with your order number, and attach a photo if it's damage: the form takes images, and they go straight into the email we read rather than being stored.
Before we start printing, yes. Get in touch and we'll cancel it. Once a personalised poster is printed it can't go back on a shelf, so from that point it's the faulty-or-damaged route above.
It's emailed the moment payment clears, and it's on the confirmation page too. If the email hasn't arrived, check spam first, then ask us to re-send the links. Put in the email address you bought with and they'll come straight back.
Yes. Your confirmation email itemises everything on the order, with the subtotal, any discount, and the total you paid. Stripe sends its own payment receipt separately.
For 1 month after you buy. After that the file is deleted from our storage and the link stops working, so save your poster somewhere safe when it arrives: it's a big file and it's yours.
A faulty file or a damaged print is replaced or refunded, always. What we can't take back is a correct poster you've changed your mind about: every one is personalised to a route, and a digital file can't be returned once it's downloaded. The full wording is in the terms.
We store what's needed to make your poster and fulfil your order, and nothing else: no advertising trackers, and card details never reach us (Stripe handles payment). The privacy policy says exactly what's kept, for how long, and who else sees it.
Ask us directly. If it belongs on this page, that's how it gets here.