Author: John

When working on the Earth Blocks layouts recently I was reminded of an idea I had years ago for a silly earth-slice cutaway graphic that I could strategically place over a 3D globe in an ArcGIS Pro layout. And since it’s a chill Friday afternoon I thought I’d follow up on that idea finally, and … Continue reading Earth Cross-Section Cutaway Graphic Hack

Download this ArcGIS Pro project package that lets you make fun block diagram poster things in minutes. There are ten layout designs in two colors, waiting for your experience and ideas. Slice out little pieces of earth and drop them onto labeled poster paper. What could be more fun? It’s simple, just… When you download the ArcGIS … Continue reading Make an Earth Blocks poster in ArcGIS Pro please

Ever feel like your beautiful web map is trapped in the confines of your monitor? Do you wish its bounty could spill out beyond the stifling domain of 1920×1080? Here’s how to trick a browser’s device emulation tools to capture enormous screenshots. Now you can export your screen as though it were the size of … Continue reading Browser Hack: Gigantic Screenshots

Ten years ago today I registered this domain. It was my final week on the job where I’d been for over a decade. There were giant unknowns ahead in the form of a new job, working from home, and a baby on the way. What a time. Things have gone wonderfully these last ten years … Continue reading 10 Years of Adventures in Mapping (and Esri)

A little while back I showed you how to make trippy AI-inspired isometric contour diagram things in ArcGIS Pro using terrain elevation data from Living Atlas. Many of you took the challenge and created amazing maps of your own! Here’s an update to that how-to, with a simplified process and a new focus area! The sea floor! … Continue reading Make these trippy seafloor maps please

Here is a map created in ArcGIS Online using Imagery and Terrain layers available in Living Atlas. Here’s how you can make it: If you’d like a straight up recipe to go along with this video, I’ve got you covered! Remember, the elevation image service is subscriber content, so it’s not for public-facing applications where … Continue reading Create Imhof-inspired maps in ArcGIS Online

I just wrote a guest blog post for the Esri Young Professionals Network (I know, I’m neither young, nor professional) about my job at Esri (UX design, cartography, and education), what I did before that, and then I carelessly toss around some advice. If that sounds like a 3 minute read that you’re interested in, … Continue reading My job at Esri, what I did before that, and then some advice

In part 1, of this two-part series, we learned how to create texture layers in ArcGIS to give your maps a realistic lived-in appearance. Now we’re going to use those texture layers in a custom basemap, and we’ll also customize the content and appearance of existing vector tile layers along the way, to get exactly what … Continue reading How to edit vector tile layers and assemble them into a custom basemap

The vector data format is unbelievably useful, but one artifact of the format is discrete boundaries. Vector has to draw a line somewhere, but the visual result can imply more certainty or discrete solidity than is really going on, in this case smoke concentration in the air. How can we benefit from the utility of … Continue reading Smokey data visualization