In this ever-changing world the maps which provide information about international boundaries and place names are continually being re-drawn. There are even completely new countries, such as the recent inauguration of South Sudan, that have to be included.

Mapping such developments is a key task of Oxford Cartographers, a company now based in Witney following its move from Eynsham in June 2011.

The company has been established for 30 years, having previously been part of the Oxford University Press.

Now it is a specialist division of CHK, an international company based in Surrey with other locations overseas, including Ireland and the United States.

Managing director Penny Watson has been with the company for 26 years.

She said: “The work we do is not what is available off the shelf — everything is made bespoke for the client.

“The maps can be designed, sized, coloured and produced in a lot of different ways. They can be paper copies, online, or presented on a variety of items, such as a mouse mat.”

At Witney there is a team of four cartographers, working on projects for clients here and overseas.

A recent project was for the American division of the Oxford University Press, producing maps for inclusion in the bibles which it publishes over there.

As well as present-day maps, historical cartography is also in demand.

The company recently supplied reproductions of a map relating to the Battle of Blenheim, which will be sold by Blenheim Palace in its gift shop.

Such reproductions are a popular form of merchandise, for museums and the tourist industry. A map of the London of 1851 is on sale in the Museum of London.

The tourist boards, among them Visit Scotland, also come to the company for their brochures and illustrated guides, the majority of which have a map as a key feature.

Oxfam has had a map produced of the many locations worldwide where it carries out its relief work which has been put on sale.

Politics and other causes lead to alterations being needed on maps across the globe — such as Burma changing its name to Myanmar and the Indian cities of Bombay and Bangalore becoming Mumbai and Bengalaru.

Nations can also change their capital city, for example Lagos in Nigeria changing to Abuja.

“We generally use both names where these changes have been made, so people are not confused,” explained Ms Watson.

“That is unless it is something like the name of Peking having been changed to Beijing a long time ago, as that is now well known.”

Another recent change in map detail has involved Venezuela’s time zone. Time zones are represented by different colours. Next year Fiji is also planning a zone change.

Many people entering dates in their new diaries will find in them maps that have been provided by Oxford Cartographers.

The company produces these for several of the main diary publishers, both in this country and overseas — Lebanon among them.

Maps are seen as prestige products when it comes to promotional merchandise, according to Ms Watson. That is the reason motor manufacturers like to include them in the ‘welcome’ package for buyers of new vehicles.

Shipping companies also use maps for promotional purposes, making a gift to clients of a record routes on which their products have travelled — and which may catch the eye of other prospective customers.

Maps are all-important to airlines too and the company produces maps for British Airways which are included in their in-flight magazines and other publications.

Then there are the smaller but equally important projects such as site plans. When a new supermarket is about to open, the information it puts out will include all a shopper wants to know about access points, cycle racks, car parking, bus stops and entrances to the store.

A recent project has been working on the mapping of routes for a series of laminated sheets for Grove Parish Council, describing 12 walks and cycle rides in and around the village.

“The council supplies us with the art work and the text for the walks and we do the mapping and printing,” Ms Watson explained.

She describes cartography as a combination of the arts and sciences — geography, graphic design and also mathematics for map projections and scale — together with computer skills.

“To be a cartographer you have to be keen on detail — this is not a job for anybody who is easy-going and slapdash,”she said.

“You have to be pernickety and mind whether things are right or not.

“The skill of a cartographer is in giving a representation of the real world so it is easy to read and understand.

“You could draw every wriggle of a river but on a small-scale map it would just appear as an unintelligible splodge. You have to be able to simplify and generalise. It is all about communication.”

Mapping is intricate work, particularly where very small scale is involved. Ms Watson herself trained at Glasgow University and she regrets the fact the course at Oxford Brookes University has stopped.

Technical advances bring continuing changes in map production. “We are continually updating the software systems that we use,” Ms Watson said. “When I started, maps were created using hand-inking and a sapphire-tipped scriber to cut into the plastic to make the line-work for the photographer. Now it is all done by computer.

“Interactive websites are something else that have been developed over the last few years.”

Nowadays most printed maps are produced on good quality paper and no longer on the linen-backed style. This is only likely to be used in the case of documents of particular significance that are to be archived.

“The thing about maps now is that they have become even more important than in the past,” said Ms Watson. “People may have had a road atlas but that was the closest they got to maps. Now technology has brought them into their homes via their PCs and their mobile telephones.”