Dec 06
The easiest way to draw a navigation map in Illustrator CS
2004 at 02.10 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Sooner or later you have to deal with navigation maps. That is of course if you are a graphic designer. Whether you need it for a brochure, an invitation card or website, you need to draw this in a program like Illustrator. In other words you need a vector-based application, since they give you the flexibility you need.
These kind of drawings aren’t the most creative jobs, I see them almost as a necessary evil that goes with the job. Could be that I express it like this because a recent job required us to draw a few 100 of these. That’s a fairly amount don’t you think? Each drawing was a matter of minutes instead of hours because of budget reason, I wanted to give my client a fair price for this part of the job. So what is the easiest, fasted and nicest way to draw these things?
Well, the answer is very easy. You start to draw every street as 1 tick black line. Make the bigger roads thicker if needed, just like the picture below.
Next step, you create a new layer on top of the “black lines” layer and call it “white lines”. You select all black lines by clicking in the circle icon on the right of the layer in the Layers palette. This selects the entire layer. Now click on the colored square that appears next to the circle icon, press alt/option key and drag this square icon to the new layer. Lock the black layer and click the circle icon of the “white lines” layer. Make all these lines white and reduce the line width (some are less tick then the others) till you get the effect you like.
In my example there is also a train rail. You achieve this by clicking the “Dashed line” option in the Stroke palette and enter the necessary values. The roundabout is created using the circle tool.
Final touch is adding the names of street, cities, high way numbers and other necessary info icons.
You know I used to draw this the “wrong” way, I just didn’t realize it back then. I drew all street using 2 black lines (1 for each border) instead of only 1. This makes it of course a rather nasty job, you need to be sure that they look perfectly symmetric. Drawing only 1 line makes the job much easier.
There is even another way of accomplishing the same result by using the Appearance palette and applying multiple line effects on 1 and the same path in Illustrator CS. You can actually apply 2 (or more) stroke effects on top of each other on one and the same path.
To me it is a rather less flexible solution for navigation maps because all the black lines need to have the same thickness and this isn’t always (maybe never) the case. Then, the lines need to consist of one path : group all lines and click the “Add to shape area” option in the Pathfinder palette. Then you can add a stroke in the Appearance palette, give it a white color and a smaller thickness. More about this powerful palette in a next article ;-)
Want to learn more?
A good and not expensive source to learn more about Illustrator, Photoshop, or web design is by joining the Tuts+ sites. You get access to the source files for just $9 a month. So your ONE membership gives you access to members-only content for ALL the Plus sites. I've written a tutorial for the Vector Tuts section.
19served
1
Excellent tip!
Tried this on Illustrator 8. Same concept - different shortcuts, but the idea worked beautifully!
I wished I used Illustrator for a work way, way back!
2
Thanks for the eyeopener! I had been doing maps “the wrong way” for years. Not anymore - great tip. And a nice weblog you have here too. :-)
3
Veerle,
Thank you so much for sharing this! I can’t believe how easy you just made it… and I can’t believe I never thought of doing it this way. Just awesome!
OK… I need to start sharing more on my blog… I’m feeling guilty. ;)
4
Yeah, this is by far (to my knowledge) the quickest way to make a simple map. I’ve been using this technique for ages, well, actually ever since my infographic teacher showed me how to do this.
But then again, I have a background in editorial design and infographics ;-)
5
Hi all, I have 23 maps to go this week for one of my projects, guess I’ll have enough practice on this ;-)
@rogier, I haven’t learned a thing on school about the software I used etc. It was just too early, after all it was still the (end of the) 80’s. So I’ve learned all things by myself. Except for one Photoshop class (vs 2.0!) and Quark XPress (vs 3) way back in the 90s and that’s it. I got some DVDs from Total Training about Illustrator 10 which are very very cool but didn’t spend much time with ‘yet’... because the lack of (free) time ;-)
6
For a number of maps (like 100) it might just be worth it to invest in something like ArcView or part of the ArcGis Software suite.
I took Intro GIS (Geographic information systems) at uni and our first task was to make maps in corel, but after that we used ArcView which is THE default map software.
It loads info from various sources and generates maps from it. It’s the program professional cartogrophers use (like national geographic, various government maping departments- like US. geological survey- etc.)
We printed out pdf’s, gifs, jpgs, etc… eventually leading up to a 6 ft poster from a special plotter printer in the lab. (nothing like a 20meg jpg to send to a printer to make it spaz out)
7
@ Veerle: I’ve got some Lynda.com cd’s (new features in Photoshop cs and Illustrator cs) lying around here somewhere, but I also haven’t had any spare time to watch them.
Most of it I’ll probably allready know, but it’s still interesting to see how other people approach different objectives in photoshop and illustrator.
And explore all the new features off course, which I’m sure I haven’t figured out completely yet :-)
8
Great item. I have use this method for interesting outline effects on (outlined) type in packaging as well, for what it’s worth.
9
Hi all,
I agree with Cameron, I used to draw hundreds of maps, sometimes map of one city. I used archview or mapinfo.
You can save the result as JPG and then do some beautification using illustrator or another graphic software.
However Verlee’s tutorial is really useful for a simple map. I like it.
10
Just GREAT!
I have a few maps to draw and was messing around on an old gif image I made once.
Can’t wait to practice it on a nice new neighbourhood. ;)
11
Now THIS is the stuff we’d like you to write about.
Good article, and it’s a great technique to use with other shapes (and thus projects too).
In PhotoShop you can use the same technique by simply ctrl-clicking a layer in the layer pallet to select the outlines. Then you select “Select -> modify -> (smooth) expand/contract”.
But I guess pretty much everyone knows that photoshop trick anyway, and since I had no clue as how to do that in Illustrator, thank you for finally showing me. :)
12
It’s also possible to get the same effect, by drawing your lines and then choosing “object” “path” “outline stroke”
13
Great stuff, Veerle. Yeah, I think the fundamental changes to the Pathfinder operations (making it dynamic to allow for compound shapes) and the introduction of the Appearance palette in Illustrator have to be two of the more powerful yet overlooked features of the bunch.
I wrote a starter article on the Appearance palette when it first was introduced in version 9. Have a look if you’re interested: http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/13994.html
14
I’m both pleased and disapointed to see this trick. I’ve been trying to do this exact thing in Freehand MX (and lower) for years and have never had success. Its good to know that I can do it in Illustrator. And bad to know that I can do it in a program I don’t have :)
15
Thank you for this tutorial!
16
this article saved my life—thanks for helping meet a cruel deadline! Thank you Veerle
17
Excellent tip! I’m forever surfing the ‘web looking for ways to bend Illustrator to my will to draw maps (I’m doing a transit system map as a personal creative project right now) and I used a similar technique to create a symbol for local dual-carriageways.
It’s brilliant the way you insightfully made this trick scale up, though.
I’ve made a note on the cartography news/blog site I edit, Designorati:Cartography (http://www.designorati.com/cartography), and I hope you don’t mind the link.
Sam Klein.
18
I’ve made a question in a forum : macuser.ro “in which software can i design a city map?” they answer to me illustrator or freehand, and someone of them give a link to me to your tutorial.
I got to say that is was really useful to me.
thanks.
19
Thank god for yours & Susan’s soultions, I have a huge map to draw for a design project & was losing the will to live with how I was originally doing it!!
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