Getting to Know Symbols and Styles in ArcGIS

61 Pages·2007·1.17 MB·English

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In this session, our goal is to explain how symbols and styles work so that
you have greater control over map design and more efficiency in map
production.
We’ll explain how symbols are created and managed in ArcGIS and we’ll
give you tips that can be used to work with them more efficiently. Then we’ll
show you some tricks for working with styles. This will help you understand
how proper management of symbols and styles can help you make what we
call a “well-behaved map”.
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Before we get started, I just want to point out that this presentation with all the notes
about what we re saying will be posted on the Mapping Center web site – a new
addition to the ESRI Support Site that offers all sorts of resources related to
mapping – including our presentations. We will post this for your there so you don't
have to take copious notes about this presentation.
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Let’s start with a few basics about symbols in map making.
Symbols are signs on maps that carry geographical meaning to the map
reader.
They are assigned to what cartographers call “graphic marks” – a GIS user
will think of these as the basic points, lines and polygons on the map that
you apply symbology to. Don’t forget that text is a symbol on a map as well,
and rasters can also be symbolized.
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Cindy Brewer shares some really nice graphic examples of the visual
variables in her book, Designing Better Maps. She also explains about
these in more detail so we won’t go into it in this session.
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Let’s take a look at some examples of how geographic data are symbolized
in a map that David Barnes, our demo guy here, has made. For this we will
tour a map of the Caribbean Sea that was compiled to look like a historical
map.
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Note on this map that we have some special point, line, and polygon symbols. We also
have some wonderful text.
Hillsigns
The hills, for example, are symbolized using what cartographers call “hillsigns”–
pictographic symbols that look a bit like the features they symbolize. These are actually
marker symbols that have been applied to different classes of physiographic features,
such as hills, mountains and mountain ranges.
Rhumb lines
For lines, we can take a look at the “rhumb lines”, or lines of constant direction. David
digitized these using the compass roses to connect lines that have the same bearing.
These are simple line symbols which we will talk more about soon.
Coastal rakes
David also used some special line pattern fills for some symbology. For polygons, we can
see that the area along the coasts have been given a special treatment to emphasize
the land-water interface. This technique is a variation on the coastal vignettes that we
have shown in the past –these are called coastal rakes and they were created by
assigning the different buffers with the line pattern fills.
Ocean art
David also did some clever things with marker symbols to add ocean art to the map –notice
the little ships and sea serpents in the water areas.
Type
And finally, note some of the wonderful things that he did with type –like labels for the
Caribbean Sea and other water bodies, as well as the informationin the cartouche at
the top right.
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So, you can see that you can achieve some neat symbology with the
software. But before we take you into the symbol design interface where
you can create these, we want to explore some of the fundamentals about
symbology in ArcGIS.
Let’s start with the basics:
Symbols are used not only to draw geographic features, but also to display
the various map elements, such as legends, scale bars and north arrows, as
well as any graphics you may add to the map, such as bounding boxes or
lines that divide the space on your page layout.
Because they are used so extensively, you may sometimes want to create
your own symbols. Before you do this, it would be helpful to understand the
basic building blocks of symbols.
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There are three primary building blocks – colors, fonts, and graphic FILES.
Note that we are talking here about 2D symbols – things are a little different
for 3D symbols. And cartographic representations treat symbols a little
differently as well. So in this presentation, we will stick to the more basic
understanding of symbols in ArcGIS.
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The first thing to understand about color is that it is defined using a color
model which is a system for specifying colors numerically according to their
individual components.
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