Mapping the magic of Dartmoor When you gaze at a map what do you expect…
Lovell Johns is a renowned mapping company and a long-standing customer of Dennis Maps. This year, it’s celebrating its milestone 60th anniversary. We talk to Louisa Keyworth, Publishing Manager at the business, to find out more about the award-winning company over the years.
Firstly, happy anniversary! How are you celebrating?
It’s a big one so we’ll definitely do something, but we haven’t decided what yet. For our 50th anniversary we released a new company video, had special offers for customers, and some of our team took on the Three Peaks Challenge. Watch this space!
What services does Lovell Johns offer?
We’re a mapping company that offers printed and digital mapping and GIS consultancy, as well as cartographic services. We also have a map retail brand, Maps International. Lovell Johns supports customers large and small – businesses, publishers, agencies, local government and individuals – with a range of exciting projects.
How did the company begin?
It started to create mapping exclusively for what’s now called The Historic Towns Trust. A group of academics from Oxford University were part of a programme to research and produce historic town atlases internationally. They went to Oxford University Press for help with this, who suggested they go to a cartographer called Colonel Henry Johns. And Lovell Johns was formed.
How has the business evolved since then?
The business grew to take on many types of mapping and many different clients – National Geographic, Transport for London and the European Commission being just some of them. We’ve grown to become the largest UK-based independent mapping company. We’ve also moved offices in Oxfordshire over the years and had changes of ownership. Notably, we became an Employee Owned Trust (EOT) in 2021.
Can you tell us more about becoming an EOT?
It was a decision made by the co-owners of the company at that point, as a way for the staff to have more engagement with and involvement in the running of the company. We have bi-annual meetings with a selection of staff, and we can talk about anything, particularly the big decisions. Everyone has an influence in how the company is shaped. It’s still early days but we’re running slightly differently to how we used to.
What else makes Lovell Johns unique?
We’ve got a low staff turnover, so returning customers know they can work with the same people on their projects. We also do everything in house, from data manipulation, to modelling and extraction, creating maps and dispatching them. The only thing we don’t do is bulk quantities of large format printing, which is where Dennis Maps comes in!
Can you tell us more about Lovell Johns’ relationship with Dennis Maps?
We’ve got a long history with Dennis Maps. They print a lot of our products – anything that needs a large format printer. I’m ordering about 20,000 maps from Dennis Maps at the moment! They’ve always been great – very helpful, flexible and friendly. They’re very quick to sort anything out and to answer any questions we have.
What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on at Lovell Johns?
It’s hard to choose – the beauty of the job is the variety. It could be something as simple as updating a road atlas every few years and knowing it’s going to go in people’s cars and be used to plan trips. We’re also finishing a town map of Chipping Norton, which is where I live. They’re going to go on boards that I walk past every day on my way to town, which will be lovely to see.
Images 2-4 courtesy of Lovell Johns.
Dennis Maps is one of the leading map printers in the world, producing more than two million maps and charts every year. We offer comprehensive pre-press services, large format print solutions using both large format litho printing and large format digital print technologies, plus specialised map folding and map finishing techniques.