County Businesses to Be Put on Map : Poster-Size Chart Designed to Appeal to Corporations

A San Jose company that has struck it rich catering to businesses’ desire for recognition says it plans to produce a poster-size cartoon map of Orange County--laden with corporate logos--for distribution and sale in January.

City Graphics of America, which has produced similar maps of the Silicon Valley in Northern California, California’s wine country, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Atlanta and the Massachusetts Technology Corridor, says companies will be able to purchase a spot on the map for about $950. A maximum of 350 companies will be portrayed, the company said, each represented in a 2-by-1 1/2-inch space.

The posters typically retail for about $10, and the company said it expects to sell 500,000 of the maps retail--for a gross income of nearly $5 million--and to distribute an additional 35,000 maps to the companies that buy space.

In addition to cartoon depictions of the various business facilities, the map also will display historical landmarks and points of interest, such as Disneyland, .

City Graphics has succeeded because its corporate customers like the idea of being prominently displayed on a map--even one that omits most streets, highways and cities in order to make room for the businesses--and because the maps are novelty items that appeal to tourists as well as residents of the featured area.

‘Good Exposure’

Buying a spot on this year’s Silicon Valley map was “good exposure” and good for worker morale, said John Anderson, president of Synoptics Inc., a San Jose maker of optical and video systems used in semiconductor manufacture. Anderson said Synoptics probably will buy a spot on the 1986 edition of the map as well.

Beside being a corporate favorite, the maps appeal to retailers, too.

“They’re selling really well, especially to people from out of town,” said Tim Wise, a salesman at Computer Literacy, a computer bookstore in San Jose.

If the Orange County map follows the pattern set by the Silicon Valley production, the county will become familiar to thousands of Japanese.

Although City Graphics did not mount any marketing effort for the Silicon Valley poster overseas, tens of thousands of the posters were sold in Japan, said John Crupper, president of City Graphics.

Sometime next year, he said, the company plans to do a caricature map of Tokyo.