Creating a 'Where We All Live Now' Reunion Map

A "where we all live now" map is one of the simplest ways to open a reunion — a single graphic, usually printed and pinned up at the venue or dropped into the group chat beforehand, marking where everyone in the group actually lives today. It works for a graduating class scattered across the country, a family that's spread further with every generation, or a former sports team or coworker group that stayed in touch. The appeal is that it needs almost no design work: collect the current cities, mark them, done.

Unlike a travel map (which shows where someone has been) or a heritage map (where someone's family came from), a reunion map is about the present — a snapshot of where a specific group of people happen to be living right now, which is exactly the kind of thing that changes enough between reunions to be worth remaking each time.

Collecting the Data First

Before building the map, get current locations from attendees — a shared form, a group chat poll, or a quick reply-all works fine for a group under a hundred or so people. You'll want:

• Current city (and country, if the group is spread internationally)
• Optionally, the person's name or initials, if the final map will label individual markers rather than just showing density

For a larger group, decide up front whether you're marking individual points or just showing which regions have people — the right answer depends on the map's final size and how legible individual labels will stay at that scale.

Choosing World, Country, or State Scope

• A graduating class or local group that mostly stayed regional often fits better on a single US state map or a country-level map than a full world view, since a world map would compress everyone into a small cluster.
• A family or international group spread across multiple continents needs the full world view to show the actual spread — the more scattered the group, the more a world map earns its space rather than looking like an empty background with a few dots in one corner.
• A mixed group, mostly domestic with a few international outliers, sometimes works best as two maps side by side: a detailed regional map for the cluster, and a small world inset showing the outliers.

Marking Locations

Add a marker or highlight for each city represented, following the same approach used for adding location markers to a dotted map. A few practical choices:

• One marker per city, even if several attendees live there — keeps the map from getting cluttered with overlapping points in dense areas
• Marker size or color tied to attendee count, if you want the map to also show how many people are in each spot, not just which spots are represented
• Name labels directly on the map, only if the group is small enough that labels won't overlap — for larger groups, a numbered key alongside the map usually reads better than crowded in-map text

Printing and Sharing It

Most reunion maps end up in one of two places: printed and displayed at the event, or shared digitally beforehand as a "guess who lives where" conversation starter. For a printed version, export at a high resolution suited to your final size — see how to export SVG maps for print projects for resolution and color-mode guidance. For a digital share, a PNG sized for social posts or a group chat works without any print-specific settings.

This same graphic works well as a keepsake afterward, too — a smaller version alongside a group photo, similar to the sentiment behind designing custom wedding maps with dot patterns, just built around a shared group history rather than two people.

Updating It for the Next One

Because the underlying map is an editable SVG, keeping the file (rather than just the final export) means the next reunion's map is a matter of updating markers rather than starting over — useful for a class or family that reunites on a recurring schedule and wants to compare "where we lived then" against "where we live now" side by side.

Generate Your Map

Start in the map generator, choosing a world, country, or US state view that matches your group's actual spread, then add markers for every city represented. If your group's story is more about the move itself than where people ended up, creating a 'we've moved' map graphic for a new address announcement covers the related single-move version of the same idea.