Abstract: A system and method for making computer-generated maps includes a different scale factor for each road in a route. The scale factors are used to optimize the route map against an objective function that considers factors such as the number of false intersections in the route and the number of roads falling below a minimum length threshold. The position of each label corresponding to a road in the map is selected from a continuous range of possible positions by refinement against a target function that minimizes the number of roads, labels and annotations the label intersects as well as the distance between the label and the center of the road corresponding to the label. A refinement technique such as simulated annealing is used to find a solution to the target function. Each road in the scaled map is rendered to provide a finished product having the appearance of a hand-drawn map.