Services

Cartographic Services are a service division of the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. Our comprehensive range of services is available to all staff throughout the University, and we also often take on commissions from outside the University.

We can initiate new material or can modify existing work, including maps, diagrams, posters, flyers, reports, slides, OHPs and electronic artwork for use in presentation applications such as PowerPoint and on web sites. We are happy to arrange everything from the initial ideas, through proofs, to the final printed material if necessary. Our experience in dealing with printers means we can advise on the best methods to reproduce your work - from low-volume monochrome and colour digital reproduction through to high-volume traditional printing.

We are also happy to provide advice and practical assistance regarding the preparation of maps, graphics, publications, PowerPoints, slides and OHPs, publicity materials, displays, etc. All our work is archived for future use or reprints.

Our range of work includes:

Colour and black-and-white maps and diagrams
Prepared to publication standard from author's originals, data sets or previously published material, suitable for publication in books, journals and periodicals or for teaching and research purposes. We are experienced with liaising with publishers and printers to ensure that your final printed work is of the highest quality.

Graphs
Our graphing and charting applications enable us to prepare virtually any graph and statistical analysis to publication standard from your original data files. If you find that graphs from Excel just aren't good enough any more, you need to come and see us. We can produce graphs in black-and-white, suitable for publication, or in colour suitable for use in PowerPoint or colour publications. We can re-draw previously published graphs, and can often even extract data sets from printed versions of graphs.

University Location Maps
We produce the University Location Maps on behalf of the Student Recruitment, Admissions & Marketing (SRAM). These can be modified and amended to suit your particular purpose.

Posters, displays, and signage
Visualisation of papers and submissions for conferences, poster presentations, etc, in full colour with lamination if necessary. Plus signs and associated artwork.

Publication and typesetting
We are experienced in producing flyers, booklets, leaflets, brochures through to books, both in monochrome and full-colour. For work within the University, we are on the SRAM list of approved suppliers, capable of producing a wide range of work that complies with the University visual identity.

PDF creation and manipulation
We have extensive experience of creating high-quality, small file-sized PDFs from a very wide range of applications and sources, including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

Staff and student photo displays and handouts
We can arrange full-colour displays of both staff and students, both framed for display and for handout (paper) and electronic distribution (PDF). With our in-house Nikon digital SLR camera and studio, we can also take portrait photographs of staff and students.

Web site design and maintenance
We can create and optimise any of our output suitable for use on the web. But we can offer far more than this. Cartographic Services staff have designed and implemented a number of web sites both within the University and beyond. We believe that our cartographic training gives us a unique insight into web design - not just in graphic visualisation, but also in the means of navigation though a site. As with a map, clarity, ease of use and concise relevant information are essential for web sites. For work within the University, we are experienced in the use of the Content Management System (CMS) - Polopoly.

Scanning
Flat copy up to A3 in full colour. 35mm slides and negatives up to 4,000ppi, with images returned to you on CD. Our OCR software can retrieve text from most printed copy and save it in a format suitable for word processing. See our new batch slide scanning service

File transfers and conversions
The Unit uses computers running both Apple Macintosh and Windows operating systems, and we are skilled at transferring and reformatting data for use on different platforms and applications. We have a wide range of storage formats and a good success rate at opening and re-saving those 'difficult' files.

Colour and black-and-white 35mm slides and OHPs
Either created from your original artwork or from scanned copy.

Facilities

Epson Stylus Color 3000 PostScript printer
Photo quality colour output on glossy or matt paper at A2, A3 and A4
Colour output on OHP material at A4

A3 600dpi colour and black & white laser prints and OHPs

Nikon SuperCoolscan 5000ED 35mm & APS slide & negative scanner - 4,000ppi maximum resolution

Epson GT10000+ A3 and hp Scan Jet 4760 A4 colour scanners - 24-bit colour, 600 x 2400dpi resolution

Wide range of Apple Macintosh and Windows XP computers
With an extensive range of illustration, graphics, desktop publishing (DTP), sound and video software

Large format colour printing and lamination from electronic files (via bureau)

Printed material (via printers)

Colour and black & white 35mm slides from electronic files (via bureau)