Contour Prints is a small print studio in the United Kingdom, founded in 2026, that makes prints of your own geography: the race you ran, the city you come from, the path you walked, your street as it was surveyed a century ago. Each one is printed to order, framed by hand and posted to you.
It began with a medal. A medal shows you finished; it does not show the 5K where you flew, the bridge where it hurt, the negative split you did not expect. The Marathon Print was made to show how, and the studio grew from it. A race turned out to be one shape among many that you know by heart: the streets you grew up on, a city you left, a coast you walked for a fortnight, the terrace that stood where your house is now.
What we print
- From your own miles. Connect Strava and the Studio draws a race, a ride, a hike or a walk, or a whole year of them, in fifteen styles. Fifty of the great marathons are recognised on sight, and the run is drawn along the course. Add a photograph of the day and the Photo Print sets it in one of six layouts.
- Places. The Map Print draws any city, town or village on earth from its own streets, water and parks: the whole city, one neighbourhood, or the stretch between two. The long-distance paths, from the Pennine Way to the South West Coast Path, are drawn end to end on one sheet. Neither needs a Strava account.
- The past. The Historic Print is your street as the Ordnance Survey drew it a century ago, in London and twelve other British cities. Type a postcode, find your house on the sheet, and it is printed from the National Library of Scotland’s own scan, with the library’s credit beneath the map.
- Coming next. Sea charts from the age of sail, patent drawings, spacecraft as their engineers drew them, botanical plates, Audubon’s birds, Hokusai’s Great Wave: maps, drawings and plates from the public record and the great collections, printed on the same paper as the rest. Each family already has its page in the collection, marked Coming until its first print is ready.
How it is made
Nothing is printed until you order it, and nothing is held in stock. A print you design yourself is composed in the Studio, free, and the preview there is the print. Every print is giclée printed on 200 gsm enhanced matte fine-art paper with archival inks, framed by hand in solid wood behind acrylic glazing — or rolled in a tube, for a frame you already have — and posted tracked. UK orders are printed and framed in the UK. Each one is made for one wall.
Your data
A Map Print or a Historic Print needs nothing from you but a place. When a print draws on your Strava activities, they are read in your browser and stay there. When you order, the finished print file and a short summary of what it shows — a name, a date, a distance — come to us so we can make it; nothing else does. The privacy page says exactly what we keep and for how long.
Get in touch
A person reads every message. Questions, ideas, a race we should recognise, an old map you would like to see on a wall: [email protected].