Add Charm to Your

By Warren DavisonHand-Drawn

GIS data with the facade of a bespoke architectural or landscaping sketch. Let’s take a closer look. These symbols have been meticulously crafted by hand (actually by mouse) to give your spatial data some of the unique visual quali- ties of hand-drawn plans, right in ArcGIS. These qualities include • Line weight variation and wobble. • Inky water color splotches. • Paint bleed. • Subtle sketched overshoots at vertices. The Draft Sketch style provides symbols for features at various scales, so you can apply the right sort of symbology based on the extent of your . The style includes must-haves like a fountain poly- gon and tree point or polygon symbols at various sizes. Some symbols use a buffer effect, so you have full control over symbol dimensions.  The Draft Sketch style includes must-have items for landscape If you are inter- like a fountain polygon. ested in adding,  Warren Davison’s Draft Sketch style contains symbols that replicate modifying, or craft- typical landscape, site , and architectural drawings stylistically. ing this style to your own purposes, dig As a GIS analyst for the City of Waterloo, Ontario, in Canada, into Field Notes I get to work with amazing teams doing GIS analysis, creating Raw Assets (https:// maps, and sharing technical and creative resources. If you visit my bit.ly/36AiQnx), the website (warrenrdavison.wixsite.com/maps), you might notice that graphic assets that I am especially fond of maps that have a hand-drawn, tactile charm. I used for all the Why should maps be sterile? Draft Sketch symbols. These are also the same graphic assets I As a civic geographer (a GIS analyst who works for a municipal- used to build an earlier style, Field Notes, which I also encourage ity), I often see the renderings of landscape and archi- you to check out at https://bit.ly/38Nmb4i. If the culinary world can tectural draftspeople. I admire the hand-drawn, artistic quality deconstruct dishes, I think you should be able to deconstruct car- that they bring to their work. They fluently render worlds that don’t tography—in fact, I encourage it! quite exist yet—plans and ideas—so a sketched and painted ap- These symbols are just the beginning. This style is by no means proach is totally appropriate and beautiful. I have felt drawn to complete, so I’d love to hear some feedback via the comments sec- them myself. I have seen requests from GIS users for symbols that tion of the Draft Sketch item on ArcGIS Online. If there’s something replicate typical landscape, , and architectural drawings you’d love to see in a future iteration of this style, submit in the stylistically while providing some cartographic flair and sketchy comments, and I’ll do my best to incorporate it. imprecision for their spatial data. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this style and it invites looks So, I opened a project in ArcGIS Pro and began creating point, of envy from the planners and in your organization when line, and polygon symbols that echo a hand-drafted aesthetic. you use it. When I was happy that the features I was symbolizing looked con- vincingly landscaped, I saved them to a style that I had created. In About the Author ArcGIS Pro, a style, is a collection of saved symbols that can be Warren Davison, a GIS analyst for the easily reused within all your projects and shared with your team or City of Waterloo, Ontario, is involved in anyone in the ArcGIS Pro user community. The graphic capabilities all things spatial at the city. of ArcGIS Pro enable some amazing—and even convincingly realis- is a recent passion, and Davison creates tic-looking—symbology. Anyone can make styles. If you can apply and shares his symbology and styles with symbology, you can create a style. I named this style Draft Sketch. others. He studied geography and environ- I am very excited to share the Draft Sketch style. I am constantly mental management at the University of improving and adding to it. If you would like to download and Waterloo. Learn more about him at warren- install the Draft Sketch style, you can at https://bit.ly/36G5gz4. It rdavison.wixsite.com/maps, and follow him consists of a collection of symbols that can be used to render your on twitter.com/WarrenDz.

58 au Spring 2020 esri.com/arcuser