All these maps fold down to 3.75" wide by 9" tall, and are made up of "panels" of that size. The first thing you must do is decide on the final trimmed paper size of the printed brochure, and the size of the map section(s) within it.Ī spreadsheet of existing map sizes is in K:\trails\New 2015 Print Trail Maps\Trail Map Sizes\Existing Trail Map Sizes.xlsx (note multiple worksheets).įor consistency's sake we will continue to use the existing standard DCR map sizes.
It is the result of me teaching myself how to do this based largely on internet sources, plus graphic design classes I've taken. I was unable to find an internet source with this kind of detailed instructions. This document is intended for an audience of my coworkers, and for other GIS professionals who want to learn how to create relatively simple print maps in Adobe Illustrator.
Middlesex Fells Reservation, Myles Standish State Forest (starting with the 2016 Centennial map), Blue Hills Reservation, Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, Norwottuck Rail Trail, Connecticut River Greenway State Park, Natural Bridge State Park, Wompatuck State Park, and others). A few parks have special maps with more colors (i.e. This is the standard type of trail map produced for most DCR parks.
The notes below are largely based on the first Greenmap we created, for Ames Nowell State Park, plus the revised Middlesex Fells Reservation 4-color map (both June 2015) the revision from scratch of the Myles Standish State Forest 4-color map ( Spring 2016) for that park's Centennial, and the Walden Pond State Reservation map revision.Ī "Greenmap" is a single-color DCR trail map, printed by a professional print shop using a green spot color.
There are also numerous free and paid software packages that can help with tasks such as creating hillshades etc. It is very popular among cartographers and would probably solve many of the issues covered in this guide. I have not used software like MAPublisher (a cartographic plugin for Illustrator) because it is expensive and we don't have a license.
It is one of many possible workflows, using the following software (most of the workflow will work fine with different versions of the software as long as they're not too old): This is the current process used for designing DCR trail maps (Greenmaps and multicolor maps). This document describes a workflow for designing maps, based on GIS data, for professional printing and the web.