Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Archive/Locator

Sample locator maps
Here are examples. Discussion follows after.

The light blue in the table above is too light, especially when used with the orange color (there isn't sufficient contrast), so I used the semi-light blue #9EC7F3. The light blue would be ok, if we also placed a thin line marking the shores (like the Cavite map below), otherwise, the semi-light blue should be used.

I figured that there are three basic types of locator maps. First is the regular locator map that highlights a territory within a larger territory. For example: Texas in U.S., Indonesia in Southeast Asia, Legazpi City in Albay, and Guinobatan in Albay (labelled).

The required borders are between the subdivisions of the larger territory (e.g, state borders in U.S., country borders in Southeast Asia, municipality and city borders in Albay), and the border of the larger territory itself. For the maps, I used the brown color for the border of the larger territory and a 50% mixture of the brown color and the light yellow color for the internal borders. Exception is the Indonesia maps where all borders are brown (the border of Southeast Asia is not that important). The optional borders are internal borders of outside territories (e.g., borders between provinces of Canada and states of Mexico in Texas map, borders between cities and municipalities in surrounding provinces of Albay [Sorsogon, Camarines Sur, etc.], and borders between non-Southeast Asian countries in Indonesia map [included in this map because these borders are important]).

The second type of map are the pinpoint locator maps. Here, a very small location (e.g. a city) is pinpointed within a recognizable larger territory. The examples I made are those for San Francisco within U.S. and Legazpi City within the Philippines. The regular locator map for Legazpi City (within Albay) isn't helpful if you don't know where Albay is, so a map of the whole Philippines is made with a point locating Legazpi (likewise if you don't know where California is, for San Francisco). These two types of maps can be combined if needed.

The third type of map are those that highlight collections of territories. The example I made is for the U.S. Midwest. Here, the regions of the U.S. (Midwest, South, West, Northeast) aren't as important as the states themselves. That's why, when creating a locator map of the Midwest, we don't really place the borders of the all the regions and omit the internal state borders. For this map, the color of the borders of the higlighted states is a mixture of 25% red and 75% red-orange from the table above.

Some possible variations for territory collection maps can be (using the Midwest as an example):


 * Highlight borders between the regions (e.g., include borders of the other regions of the U.S. in a border color equal to the U.S. border)
 * Same as option 1 but also omit the state borders for the other regions. (Some maps might be better with this style).
 * Time zones: the highlighted territory doesn't naturally follow the primary/secondary borders

--seav 08:20, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Excellent. I've added the new colors to the color table; overall I think they look very good, though the contrast between land and water could be better. Would it help to use the blue water border color on those? At any rate, it's better than the lighter blue would have been.

What software do you use to create these? I gotta get my hands on it... -- Wapcaplet 16:46, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I've tried the blue water border color and it's too dark. Personally, I think that the contrast between land and sea is already enough. The light yellow territory stands out sufficiently from the water while the outside territories recede in the background but not too much that it blends with the sea (the contrast using the light blue would be worse). The software I used is Adobe Photoshop, so the maps are all rasterized instead of in vector format.


 * Can you think of other possible styles of locator maps? Let's try to make samples of everything so that we can decide how to deal with colors and styles. I also think that squares for pinpoint locations would be better than circles, but that's my taste. :)


 * --seav 22:00, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

We haven't really had any votes, but is it safe to throw out the "Tan" color for secondary regions? Let me know what water colors you think we should keep; we may be able to get away with just the medium blue. "Red" may be useful as a label color, since it stands out well (though it may need to be darker to contrast with the other reddish colors). -- Wapcaplet 02:45, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Locator Map style details
Can we all decide on the details for the locator maps?



A-J are variations on the basic map. The ones on the left uses the medium blue color for the seas while the ones on the right uses the light blue (removed from table) color. A and B has no coast lines, C and D uses a subtle blue coast line, E and F uses a dark blue coast line, and G and H uses a black coast line. I and J uses red for the primary border and grey for the secondary border instead of the dark and light brown colors in the table.

If we decide not to draw in the coastlines, I suggest that we use medium blue (A). Otherwise, the light blue seas should be used instead and with the coastlines somewhere between D and F (the idea here is to use subtle colors). Personally, I prefer the red borders instead of the brown but it's not something I would argue over.

The last two maps are just ideas for more good-looking maps. K has topography information while L uses shadows instead of coast lines. However, these are harder to make and would make for very large image files.

By the way, the maps are labelled because I just like them labelled (you can easily see the surrounding areas which puts things in proper context). Yeah, it's hard to create international versions but I think in the future, maps should be auto-generated anyway.

Some people have also started creating maps based on the colors discussed when WikiProject Maps was created. Samples follow below. It seems that people prefer to have just one color of lines (both coasts and borders). What do you all think?

--seav 08:05, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * These look great. Where the brown boundaries seem unified with the land masses, while the grey ones look like they could be roads.  Topographic shading is useful, when there isn't a separate landform/land cover map.  The drop-shadow land is attractive, but doesn't really add any information, so I would avoid it.  Splitting hairs, I wouldn't make the labels quite so bold. &mdash;Michael Z. 15:40, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

By Andy. Uses light blue seas, thin black lines for both coasts and borders, the original dark red for the highlighted region (since changed to lighter red), and the original tan color for the surrounding areas (since changed to an orange-tan color).


 * Rationale: The darker red works better for small subdivisions (see e.g. Samut Prakan province) as it gives a stronger contrast, while for big ones (e.g. the maps of Costa Rica I did recently) it looks a bit too strong. The border colors were used same as after scaling down the difference between the two colors gets lost to quite some degree (plus it was easier to have just one border color of course). The light blue for oceans was chosen as I plan to use the same base map to create locator maps for the national parks, including some marine national parks, where the darker blue then can be used for highlight (haven't tried it yet however if it's enough contrast). And the dark tan for neighbor countries was used just because I began with the first version of the palette, and continued later maps from there. Notice that I also applied a sharp filter, it makes the many small borders inside the country better visible. andy 12:21, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 By Morwen. Uses medium blue seas, thin black lines for both coasts and borders, and the light red for the highlighted area.

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I don't really know where on

Queenstown, Tasmania|Queenstown]], Rosebery, Strahan and Zeehan. I've used numbers to mark the towns, so I can use the one map (and in fact the one template - Template:TasmanianTowns_WestCoast - for all towns in the area. I haven't integrated it into the main West Coast, Tasmania page yet.

I did it all before I saw this page, so I haven't used any of the standard colours or styles listed here. I was just looking for advice as to what changes I should make, before I do it for most of the other Local Government Areas of Tasmania. -- Chuq 04:45, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)