Geographx was established as a map design studio in 1998.
It has undertaken custom design and production work for map clients both in New Zealand and overseas. The most ambitious project completed was coordination and management of cartographic production for the EARTH Platinum World Atlas, recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest atlas ever printed and winner of the International Map Trade Association (IMTA) Global Award for Best Map Product in 2013.
Geographx also developed spatial data, notably its distinctively styled natural colour New Zealand basemaps. Its New Zealand terrain model is in the public domain with more than 62,000 registered downloads from the LINZ Data Service.
It represented Skyline Software Systems in New Zealand for several years as distributor of its dynamic earth visualisation software products to the New Zealand Defence Force.
Company founder and chief cartographer Roger Smith is now semi-retired but continues to create new backcountry and wilderness wall maps. Geographx today serves as a publishing house to brand, share, and sell prints of these.
Roger’s cartography has been acknowledged internationally. He designs for print, primarily large format wall maps with a strong aesthetic. The character of physical environments is emphasised using natural colour basemaps. Oblique map projections are frequently used to better convey appreciation of landforms and variation in terrain.
In recent years he has faced map-related challenges of a different sort, whether contributing to the occasional academic paper or lecturing on cartography and geovisualisation at under-graduate and post-graduate level.
In 2015 he curated Unfolding the Map, an exhibition on the cartography of New Zealand which ran at the National Library until early 2018. The exhibition was a collaboration between the National Library of New Zealand, Land Information New Zealand, Eagle Technology and Archives New Zealand.
In 2017 he received the New Zealand Spatial Excellence Award for outstanding contribution to the spatial industry. In 2018 he travelled to Patagonia to advise on wilderness map production. From 2018 to 2022 he served as President of the New Zealand Cartographic Society.