Adding lines and shapes to a map is a common task when creating interactive maps. These drawings serve various purposes, such as delineating administrative boundaries, highlighting areas, or depicting routes.
However, with numerous drawings on a map, it can be challenging for users to distinguish between them, especially on small screens like smartphones.
Integrating style patterns into your drawings can greatly enhance the user experience, making your map a more effective tool for communication and exploration.
Style patterns are used to fill lines or shapes on the map with repeating images or textures, rather than just using solid colors or dashes. For example, you can use an arrow image to highlight a route and its direction, or different stripe patterns to differentiate highlighted areas.
Benefits of Using Style Patterns for Drawings
Utilizing style patterns to fill lines and shapes on interactive maps offers several advantages:
Improved Usability
Style patterns help differentiate between various types of routes, boundaries, regions, or zones. This makes it easier for users to quickly understand the map and identify specific features. For instance, using a tree pattern for wooded areas or a car pattern for parking lots can provide intuitive clues about the nature of these areas.
Enhanced Visual Appeal and Customization
Style patterns can significantly enhance the visual appeal of a map. With textures or repeating images, the map becomes more engaging and visually interesting to users. Additionally, image patterns provide more flexibility in presenting information on the map, allowing for more granular customization. For example, in a map of a wine region, you could use image patterns with logos to highlight areas where different wineries grow their grapes.
Accessibility
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 or the newer 2.2) emphasize “Sufficient Color Contrast” to ensure that users with visual impairments or color blindness can distinguish between different elements on the map. However, color coding alone might not suffice on busy interactive maps. Image patterns add a layer of distinction that significantly aids map readability for visually impaired users.
How to Add Style Patterns to Your Map Drawings?
The image patterns you can use must be included with the base map style you are using. Below, we provide a list of patterns available for your base maps.
You can also use your own image patterns by creating a custom map style.
To add an image pattern to your drawing:
- Edit an image layer
- Click on “Customize”
- Enter the name of the image in the image pattern field
Style Patterns Available
We regularly update our collection with new image patterns that you can use for your map drawings. The following images are currently available for most map styles (see list below):
Map Styles with Image Patterns
Style patterns are available for the following map styles:
- Streets
- Nature
- Light
- Dark
- Streets Dark
- Streets Essential
- Bright
- Light Blue
- Ukiyo-e
- Standard
- Blank
- Terrain
- Marine