Latest Contributions by HeatherSmith

Are you intimidated by licensing ArcGIS Enterprise? There's a new guide to help you get through the process smoothly and successfully. @MarleyGeddes and I wrote a three-part tutorial series in ArcGIS Blog that walks you through licensing. It helps you identify which licenses you need, explains the difference between user types and member roles, shows you what to do in My Esri, and how to authorize your license files once you have them. You can find all three tutorials on ArcGIS Blog: License ArcGIS Enterprise 1: Choose user types and member roles License ArcGIS Enterprise 2: Generate ArcGIS Enterprise licenses License ArcGIS Enterprise 3: Authorize ArcGIS Enterprise and manage licenses   ... View more

On the Esri Tutorials team, we know that many of you are looking for tutorials to meet specific needs. Perhaps you are a professor who needs lab materials that cover specific learning objectives and use local data. Or perhaps you are a team lead who needs to train new employees on a critical workflow. Write a GIS tutorial is a new ArcGIS StoryMaps template that we’ve developed to help you create your own learning materials. Starting a tutorial from scratch can be intimidating, but by following our template, you can focus purely on your tutorial’s content without having to worry about formatting. If you haven’t heard of templates in ArcGIS StoryMaps yet, that’s because they are a new feature, currently still in beta. When you open the Write a GIS tutorial template, you’ll see a number of blue text boxes. These boxes contain our instructions, tips, and examples for writing each part of your tutorial. When you publish your tutorial, anything inside a blue box won’t be visible. Those elements are only visible to you while you are editing the story. To learn about other ways to use templates, read Getting started with templates in ArcGIS StoryMaps. Structure and style Over the past 10 years, we’ve developed a structure and style that allows us to write GIS tutorials that are consistent and clear. In our template, we’ve outlined the guidelines of our style so you can use it too. You will find advice on the following subjects: Formatting steps and other text Permissions and acknowledgements for data and images The overall structure of a tutorial Introductions and conclusions Why and how Structure and style aren’t enough to make a great tutorial. We also encourage you to read our accompanying story, 6 tutorial writing tips from the Esri Tutorials team. In this article, we cover the following topics: Start with why Explain why throughout the tutorial Show how Don’t give the learner choices Be specific, not general or vague Test the tutorial Adapt our existing tutorials Did you know that all of the tutorials published on our gallery are shared under a Creative Commons license? We encourage you to reuse and adapt these tutorials to suit your needs. For example, you might rewrite Join tabular data to a spatial layer using data that your team commonly works with. Or you might modify Download census data to look at a different state. Before you start adapting, read our Terms of Use page. Share your tutorials We’d love to see your GIS tutorials! Whether or not you’ve written them within our template, you can submit them to us through this form: Share your tutorial. Once we’ve received enough, we’ll share them in a collection so other teachers can benefit from your good work. Other formats This template is also available in a word document.  ... View more

I recently finished writing a 5-part tutorial series all about web cartography. Cartographic creations with web maps will teach you how to make professional quality web maps and apps with Map Viewer and ArcGIS StoryMaps. The video below shows what you will make and learn. This tutorial series serves as a companion peice to Cartographic creations in ArcGIS Pro, and both are key content in the Introduction to Cartography course. It teaches skills related to symbology, data management, projections, basemaps, pop-ups, labeling, visual hierarchy, data attribution, blend modes, effects, and layout design.   ... View more

Choosing colors might be the hardest part of mapmaking. At least I find it challenging. A trick I often use to make this part of cartography easier is to choose similar colors to represent similar things and different colors to represent different things. People naturally assume that things that look similar are similar, and you can use this assumption to your advantage to make a more intuitive map. I thought I’d make a video about this technique, but I had too many examples of how helpful it can be, so I ended up with three videos instead! In them, I use both ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online to demonstrate the power of color matching in maps. All of the data in these videos is from Halifax Open Data: https://catalogue-hrm.opendata.arcgis.com Follow along with the map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=1d64e0d983dc4861b3276c9602dab43c To watch the video with subtitles, visit https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_gvb3mgan  Follow along with the map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=4d49bc7574ae4b62bf405e2d44a007df To watch the video with subtitles, visit https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_5b5y6zws  Follow along with the map in ArcGIS Online: https://www.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c8853977fdc3407f8cee3ff3fbd64ecc Follow along with the map in ArcGIS Pro: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=616b2d3b71df44e7981a48e7b885244e To watch the vidoe with subtitles, visit https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_zhzrsu8a Learn more You can find more map-making skills on the Quick Cartography playlist, and on the Introduction to Cartography site. ... View more

Colors are never neutral. They affect how people think and feel about your map. As a cartographer, you should be aware of the connotations and associations carried by the colors you use. They can be powerful tools to help you communicate more clearly. But if you ignore them, they can just as easily sabotage your map’s message. The two videos below share examples of color choices based on associations and connotations. The examples given are in ArcGIS Pro, but this advice is relevant to any mapping situation.  (Watch the video with subtitles here: https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_pbjpq2zm)  (Watch the video with subtitles here: https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_j4e7qnwn)   Takeaways: If there’s a color that’s normally associated with your subject, you should probably use it in your map. What colors will your audience expect to see on this map? Try those first. Color connotations and associations can be overpowered by other signals in your map. Color connotations vary (sometimes dramatically) between cultures. Further learning: Emily Meriam is a pro at exploiting color connotations and associations. You can learn more about how she does it in the following articles: Creating a meaningful temperature palette and Sunset Colormapping. You can find more videos like these in the Quick Cartography playlist. Data sources: The data in these videos comes from the following sources: U.S. Heart Disease Mortality Rates, 2014-2016, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interactive Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke. https://nccd.cdc.gov/DHDSPAtlas. Accessed on May 2024 and used with permission USA Cropland, USDA NASS National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 2.1, USGS, Esri USA Parks, Esri, TomTom USA Census Urban Areas, Esri, US Census Bureau Surface Air Temperature (Average Annual), Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information [2020] Presidential Election 2020 USA - County, MIT Election Data and Science Lab, 2018, "County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2020", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VOQCHQ, Harvard Dataverse, V11, UNF:6:HaZ8GWG8D2abLleXN3uEig== [fileUNF] ACS Race and Hispanic Origin Variables - Boundaries, U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 2018-2022 5-year estimates, Table(s) B03002 ... View more

In map design, the choice of color scheme is dependent on the basemap. If you have a light basemap, most people will interpret dark colors to mean “more” and light colors to mean “less”. If you have a dark basemap, the opposite is true. The video below shows examples of designing with light and dark color schemes in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro. (Watch the video with subtitles here: https://mediaspace.esri.com/media/t/1_zvd6e57g) Takeaways: If you’re using a light basemap, dark colors will stand out more and so appear to mean “more”. If you’re using a dark basemap, light colors will stand out more and so appear to mean “more”. You can flip color schemes to control which end equates to more and which equates to less. The subject of your map can sometimes override these rules. In ArcGIS Online, you can search for color schemes designed specifically for light or dark basemaps. If you’re struggling to find the right color scheme, try changing the basemap. Colors all look different against different backgrounds. There are a lot of other considerations that go into designing choropleth maps. You can learn about some of them in this related video: Configure a choropleth map. You can follow along with the map in ArcGIS Online or in ArcGIS Pro. You can find the data at Halifax Open Data.  You can find more videos like this one on the Quick Cartography playlist. ... View more