Put It All Together


Now that you've worked your way through this course, you have learned skills related to planning maps, symbolizing spatial data, choosing map projections, manipulating data, configuring pop-ups and labels, and designing effective layouts. However, when you make maps, these skills are not separate tasks completed in a sequence. Instead, they overlap and intermingle. The decisions you make about symbols affect the decisions you make about attributes, which affect the decisions you make about pop-ups.

Follow the full-process cartographic workflows below to learn how make effective maps from start to finish.


   
PLANNING
SYMBOLS
PROJECTIONS
DATA
POP-UPS & LABELS
LAYOUT
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
ARCGIS ONLINE
Design an interactive map.


Style thematic data

Map mountains with color, size, blending, effects, filters, and visibility ranges.

  • Type: Tutorial
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 40 minutes
  • High-Level Tasks: Map mountains with multivariate symbols. Design a multiscale map. Use colors, outlines, and effects to control visual hierarchy.


Customize a basemap

Add hillshading, contours, and hydrography to a basemap, and use it to change the map’s projection.

  • Type: Tutorial
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • High-Level Tasks: Configure a basemap with a different projection. Mix and match basemap layers. Emphasize lakes and rivers in the basemap and use blending to clip these features to the park boundary.


Make pop-ups and labels

Create custom pop-ups and labels with text formatting, attribute expressions, and images.

  • Type: Tutorial
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • High-Level Tasks: Configure pop-ups with attribute expressions, HTML, and images. Configure labels with filters, color, and visible ranges.


Guide users through a map

Use ArcGIS StoryMaps to guide your audience through the important features of your map.

  • Type: Tutorial
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 20 minutes
  • High-Level Tasks: Make a story. Add a map. Configure a legend. Describe symbols and features.


Style and credit a story

Customize a theme, add images, and credit data sources in ArcGIS StoryMaps.

  • Type: Tutorial
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 35 minutes
  • High-Level Tasks: Add images to the story and customize its theme. Give credit to the map's data sources.
Cartography checklists

Ask these questions throughout the mapmaking process to help you make the best map possible.

  • Type: Article
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Duration: 5 minutes
ARCGIS PRO
Design a static map.

CAPSTONE PROJECT

Once you've gone through the other content in this course, try to combine all of your new skills to make a thematic map of your own. Open one of the maps below and use the data inside to craft a new map.


   

  1. Explore the data and its attributes.
  2. Decide on a message for your map. Will it serve as a functional tool or tell an interesting story?
  3. Decide which data you will include. You may choose to remove or filter some of the layers. You may choose to find additional layers to add. You may choose to focus your map on a smaller area.
  4. Choose an appropriate projection.
  5. Symbolize the data.
  6. Create labels or pop-ups.
  7. Create an app or layout with surround informationfor example, a legend, chart, or explanatory text.