Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

How can I give my map an "antique" feel?

May 31 2007 | 3 comments
Categories: Symbology

Hi, I have been asked to produce a map of the movement of the original settlers in KwaZulu-Natal. I thought as an added touch to the final product, it would be best to give the map an "antique" feel. By antique, I mean the fancy,curly north arrow and scale bar, and other little touches only found on the really old maps.

Is there a way in ArcMap to produce a map that looks like that? Would it be possible to download a style from ESRI?

Mapping Center Answer:

Yes, there is a Historical style that you can download from:

http://mappingcenter.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=arcgisResources.gateway.

You can also download a zipped package of Historical Map Effects resources from our data model web page:

http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=downloads.dataModels.filteredGateway&dmid=3.

Scroll down and look for:

NACIS 2006 .ttf, .style, .ldb, .bmp, .db, .emf, .txt, and .pdf - zip format, 77888kb (submitted 11/01/2006).

This ZIP file contains a presentation we gave detailing how to achieve some of the historical map effects. It also contains the style that is currently on Mapping Center (the link above). We will be moving this information from the Basemap Data Model Page to the Mapping Center site after the User Conference.

Hope this helps!

Bad Link? posted by Anthony Hewitt on Apr 24 2009 12:58PM

The second link mentioned above takes me to the Base Map Data model and I don't see a link there to "NACIS 2006 .ttf, .style, .ldb, .bmp, .db, .emf, .txt, and .pdf - zip format, 77888kb (submitted 11/01/2006)".

Bad Links? posted by Khalid Akbar on May 24 2011 10:51PM

Both links mentioned above takes me to no where, I don't see a link there to Historical style or NACIS2006.zip.

If somebody has them, can he share it?

Links posted by Aileen Buckley on May 25 2011 10:39AM

The first link is still good and works for me. To find the presentation we gave at the 2006 NACIS conference, you can use this link:

http://mappingcenter.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=resources.presentationsOlder

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