This update from Esri regarding the new Canvas Map Option…
The new Light Gray Canvas Map provides a neutral, light gray background with minimal labels and features, drawing attention to your thematic content, thus making it an ideal basemap for bringing your data to the foreground. The Light Gray Canvas Map supports strong colors, creating a visually compelling map graphic that makes it easy to see the intended patterns.
The Light Gray Canvas Map provides global coverage and was developed by Esri using NAVTEQ data for North America, DeLorme basemap layers, and Esri basemap data.
View this map live and get more details.
See Also:
Esri Canvas Maps Part I: Author Beautiful Web Maps With Our New Artisan Basemap Sandwich
From the Esri blog…
Availabilty
Currently, Canvas Map Light Gray covers the world to the caching scale of approximately 1:2,000,000. Coverage extends in North America to approximately 1:9,000. Over the next few months, we will add more coverage for the world to align with our other ArcGIS Online basemaps.
This web map will be added to the basemaps available in the ArcGIS.com map viewer and ArcGIS Explorer Online soon. Simply click one of those links to launch the interactive application of your choice, and then choose Light Gray Canvas from the basemap control to start using this service. In the meantime you can access Canvas Map Light Gray here. In the near future you will also find this service in the basemap gallery in ArcGIS Explorer Desktop and ArcGIS Desktop 10