Adventures In Mapping | John Nelson Maps

How to make textured basemaps with AI, the VTSE, and your wits?

The Vector Tile Style Editor lets you remove, splice, and restyle vector basemap content to your heart’s content. Sometimes my heart isn’t content until I’ve added a little bit of a texture pattern to a basemap.

How to enthingify maps with cartoon imagery and chunky overviews?

Here’s a map poster made in ArcGIS Pro, and I’d like to tell you exactly how it was made. It sports cartoon-ized imagery, textures to make it look touchable, and overview globes that cast cute shadows.

How to make a layer’s labels readable over any background color?

Hey, check out the black labels for the black polygon features in this map! Oh, wait, you can’t read them. Ok, I’ll just switch them to white, like this: Foiled again! Now the white features’ labels are invisible.