You have seen how you can create informative and interesting 2D and 3D maps using ArcGIS Pro. While these are impressive, they are not complete. The last step to producing any map is to put it in a frame with other information, which helps the viewer comprehend the information you are presenting. This frame is called a layout.

Each layout you create will include several elements, such as a north arrow, a scale, and a title, in addition to one or more map frames. The need to include various elements in your layout will depend on the story that you are trying to impart to the viewers. Before you create your layout, you need to take some time to figure out the following:

• What is the purpose of this layout?
• How will it be used?
• Who will be using it?

This chapter will help you answer these questions, which will impact how you design your layout. They will help you determine the size, scale, and details that you need to include. So, some thought should be given before you even start building the layout in ArcGIS Pro. This chapter will help you learn how to create a layout and a layout template of your own.

The one thing you always need to keep in mind is that the layout represents your final product. It will form the basis upon which all your efforts are judged. It will not matter how good your data or analysis happens to be if it is not presented in a clear and professional manner.

Designing a well-thought-out layout will lend credibility to all your hard work. It is also an opportunity to let your creative side show. The one thing I always tell those who are new to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) when they reach this point is to make it pretty. While that seems simple, there are plenty of examples of GIS maps that fail to meet that simple guideline.

In this chapter, you will learn about the following topics:

• Understanding the considerations of designing a layout
• Creating a layout in ArcGIS Pro
• How to add a new layout to a project
• How to design a layout that contains one or more map frames
• How to create and use a layout template

Technical requirements

This chapter has no special technical requirements other than access to an ArcGIS Pro 2.5 or higher license. Any license level will work—Basic, Standard, or Advanced. You will also need to have completed Exercise 3A and Exercise 3B from Chapter 3, Creating 2D Maps.

Understanding the considerations of designing a layout

Creating an effective layout that communicates the results of your GIS efforts takes thought and planning. There is more to it than just printing your map or randomly adding some elements to a page. In general, there are three basic considerations that you need to address as you are creating a new layout:

• Purpose: Why does this map exist?
• Audience: Who will be using the map?
• Situation: How will it be used or presented?

All of the preceding three factors will impact how you design your layout. They will guide the size of the map, the orientation, the content, and more.

In this section, we will understand the purpose of a map, along with working out the audience for a map.

Understanding the purpose

Each map or poster exists for a reason. It has some purpose—it may be trying to show the location of the city hall, what parcels are in the flood zone, or how to get from one location to another. The purpose of a map or layout defines the overall theme of that map. It also helps determine what content needs to be included. Some common map purposes include the following:

• To show the location of features
• To highlight specific attributes associated with features, such as zoning classification, population size, pipe material, or road type
• To show spatial relationships between features in one or more layers
• To present the results of the analysis
• To meet legal requirements, such as the official zoning map for a city

It is now easy to see how the purpose will be a factor in determining the content of your layout. If you are creating a zoning map, you will certainly need a map frame that shows the zoning classification of each parcel. You will also need a legend that allows the map viewers to understand the different classifications. If this is the official zoning map for the city, you may also need to add places for city officials to sign the map and the date of adoption.

In the next section, we will understand how to determine the purpose of a map.

Practice exercise – Determining the purpose

Based on the five purposes listed previously, let's try to determine the purpose for each of the following maps:

• The following screenshot of map 1 shows you a visual of the city of Trippville. What is the purpose of this map?

• The following screenshot of map 2 shows you the underground sewer system for the city. What is the purpose of this map?

• The next screenshot of map 3 shows you the parcels in relation to wetlands. What is the purpose of this map?

The preceding maps are just a few examples.

Think back to other maps you have seen or used and see whether you can remember their purpose. See whether you can think of any other purposes in addition to the ones mentioned here in this book. We will discuss the audience in the next section.

Understanding the audience for the map

Who will use your map will also have a great impact on how you design and present your map. This is your audience. There are several factors about your intended audience that you should consider, such as the following:

• Age
• Education or knowledge level
• Physical abilities or disabilities

We will look at each of the preceding factors in the upcoming sections.

Learning about the age factor

If you are preparing a map for an older audience, you may need to make the font bigger to make it easier to read. This may mean you cannot put too much detail into a single map to avoid over-cluttering it, which might also mean you need to create multiple maps for this audience. Age may also impact the choice of symbology styles you use. If you are making a map for a very young audience, you might want simple, brightly colored symbols, for example.

Age can also impact the methods you use to present the maps you create to ensure the greatest impact. Younger audiences tend to prefer digital media to printed maps, while older audiences tend to prefer printed maps to digital media.

Understanding the education and knowledge level

The education and knowledge level of your intended audience will also have an impact on your map and layout design. For example, if you are creating a map of your sewer system for a group of civil engineers, they are going to want a lot of detail. They will want to know the pipe sizes, flow direction, treatment capacities, and more.

However, if you are creating a sewer map for the general public, that level of detail will confuse many because they do not have engineering education or knowledge. The public will more likely just be interested in knowing whether they have sewer service or not.

Physical abilities or disabilities are something you should also consider:

• Will the audience include a lot of people that wear glasses?
• Will some of them be color blind?

These factors are to be considered as well when designing your layout and maps.

We will now move on to the next section, which covers learning about the situation.

Learning about the situation

The situation is all about how your map will be presented and used:

• Will it be presented in a digital format or will it be printed?
• Will it be hung on a wall, used during a presentation, or taken out into the field?
• Is it a legal document? If so, are there any defined requirements?

All of the preceding points will impact your design.

You may wonder why you would design a map differently if you are going to print it versus publish it digitally. Well, the simple answer is that each has its own limitations. When printing a map, you are limited by the capabilities of your printer. Is it color or just black and white? What sizes will it print? How much memory does it have? It does little good to design a colored 36 inch by 48 inch map with aerial photography if all you have is a small desktop color printer that has only a couple megabytes of memory.

Your map will overwhelm a printer like this. Another thing you need to consider when printing maps is paper quality, especially if you're using an inkjet-style printer. The quality of the paper you use in an inkjet printer has a big impact on the quality of your final output and even what you can print. Low-grade, 20 lbs bond paper will not produce a high-quality map. It will also not do well with a map that has a large amount of fill or aerial photos. The paper just cannot absorb the amount of ink that is applied, so it will become wrinkled and rip very easily. It might even damage your printer.

There are several options that you have for publishing a map digitally. You can publish it in a .pdf file. This allows people without GIS software to view your creation on a wealth of devices and even add the map to a website without the need for special GIS web servers. .pdf files can also be secured, requiring a password to open them. Current versions of the Portable Document Format (PDF) format even support layers and attribute data. This allows you to create an interactive map, even for those without GIS software. When creating a PDF, you must consider the file size. The more you include in a map and the higher the resolution, the larger the PDF becomes.

You can also publish your maps to ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise. These allow even greater levels of access and functionality. However, these are web-based technologies, so you must always be concerned about performance when you are designing a map that will be published in this manner. Simpler is always better. You will need to avoid complex symbology and labels wherever possible. Reducing the number of layers also helps.

Another popular way to present a map digitally is by using a projector. This is especially common when presenting the map at a meeting. Projectors tend to wash or fade colors, however, so you may need to choose a more intense color palette for your map if you intend to project it. Also, remember that projectors will impact the scale of your map. Even though you might set the map to one scale in ArcGIS Pro, the projected image will not always be on that same scale.

Those are just a few of the ways that the situation might impact your map design. Let's see what other things you can think of where a given situation might impact your design. Answer the following questions:

• You are preparing a map of your water system that will be given to the field crews to help them locate the system in the field. The maps will be stored in their trucks and used in all kinds of weather. How might this impact your design?
• You are preparing the official zoning map for a city. This will be the legal zoning map, as required by the city's zoning ordinance, and will hang in the city hall for city officials and citizens to use. What factors should you consider that might impact your design?

Now, you know what three things need to be considered when designing your layout and how you should plan to present it to your audience. You also learned about the purpose and audience of a map. It is time to begin building your layout.

Creating a layout in ArcGIS Pro

Now that you know what factors can impact the design of your layout, it is time to learn how to actually create a new layout in ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Pro supports several methods for creating new layouts. You can start from scratch, adding a new blank layout to your project, or you can import an existing map document file that was created using ArcMap, another Esri desktop GIS application. You can also copy an existing layout within your project, or you can use a map or import a layout file as a template.

We will now explore a couple of these methods using the project that we created in Exercise 3B and Exercise 3C in Chapter 3, Creating 2D Maps. The director has asked you to print a few of the maps you created in those exercises. So, you will create a layout for each map that the director wants to be printed.

However, before you get started on creating the requested layouts, in this section, you will explore the general workflow required to create a new layout. Once you have done that, you will jump into a hands-on exercise to create your own layout.

Understanding the general workflow to create a layout

As we have discussed, creating a new layout in ArcGIS Pro does take some time and thought. There are several steps that make up the general workflow required to generate a new layout within your projects, as illustrated in the following diagram:

As you can see, you will first start with the three considerations discussed previously—the purpose, situation, and audience. Once you have determined those considerations, you will need to insert the new layout into your project. Once you have inserted the layout, you will need to configure the page size and layout.

This will be heavily influenced by the situation and audience considerations you have determined that will apply to this layout. With that complete, you will then insert the map frame or frames needed to support the purpose. Next, you will begin to insert map elements, such as a title, north arrow, scale, and legend, into the layout. Lastly, you will print your layout or export it to a file, such as a PDF.

Now, it is time for you to put this new knowledge to work with a hands-on exercise. In the following exercise, you will create a new layout based on a request from the director.

Exercise 6A – Creating a simple layout

The director wants you to print a copy of the map you created previously that identified commercial properties that were between 1 and 3 acres. He needs to use the map in a meeting that he will conduct with the executives of the company to search for a new office in the city.

Step 1 – Opening ArcGIS Pro and your project

The first step is to open the project in which you will be creating the layout:

1. Start ArcGIS Pro.
2. If you see the %your name% Ex3B project listed in the Open a recent project list, select it and proceed to next step. Otherwise, click on the Open another project option.
3. Click on Computer, located under Open.
4. Select the Browse button.
5. In the Open Project window, select your C: drive from the tree in the left-hand side pane.
6. Navigate to C:StudentIntroArcProMy ProjectsTripp Ex3A and click on %your name% Ex3B.aprx, then click on the Select button.

Your project should open to a familiar map. You should see up to three tabs across the top of the map view area for each of the three maps you created in the exercises from Chapter 3, Creating 2D Maps.

Step 2 – Adding a new blank layout

In this step, you will add a new blank layout to your project and then add a map frame that will display the map. This map shows the commercial properties that are between 1 and 3 acres in size.

Since this map will be used in a meeting with multiple people, you will create a large layout. This will allow you to create a map that is easy for a group to view and use in a meeting. For this meeting, the director only wants to focus on those parcels that are within the size limit specified. He does not need to see the entire city:

1. Activate the Insert tab in the ribbon menu.
2. Click on the New Layout button in the Project group tab.
3. From the list of available layout options, select Architectural E 36" x 48", as in the following screenshot:

You should now see a new blank layout in your project. In addition, a new folder has been added to your Project pane, named Layouts.

4. Ensure you still have the Insert tab active in the ribbon.
5. Click on the small drop-down arrow located below the Map Frame button located in the Map Frames group of the Insert tab.
6. Select the Entire City option from the available options, as in the following screenshot:

You may remember that Entire City is a bookmark. You created it in Exercise 3B in Chapter 3, Creating 2D Maps. You can either insert the default extent for a map, the current view extent, a scale, or any bookmarks that you have created as the map frame.

7. Using your mouse, double-click in the lower-left corner of the layout. Your layout should look as in the following screenshot:

As you can see, the map frame only occupies the lower-left corner of your layout. You will now need to resize it.

8. With the map frame inserted, a new tab should have appeared in the ribbon—Format. Click on the Format tab to activate it.
9. In the Size and Position group on the Format tab, set Width to 45 and Height to 30. You will need to press your Enter key to apply the values after you type them in.
10. Set X to 1.5 and Y to 4.5, as in the following screenshot. This should shift the map frame so that you have room at the bottom for elements such as a title, a north arrow, and legend:

11. Save your project.

You have just added your map frame to the layout. This particularly simple layout will only contain a single map frame. The next step will be to ensure the map in the map frame shows the desired area at the required scale.

Step 3 – Displaying the desired area

Now that you have added the desired map to your layout and sized it appropriately, you need to focus on the area that contains the parcels of interest to the director for his meeting. You should notice that these parcels are concentrated on the east side of the city. So, you will need to zoom into that area:

1. From the Layout tab, select the Activate button, located in the Map group.

2. The Map tab should automatically appear with the Explore tool active. Using the Explore tool, click on a point that is located near the center of the commercial parcels, which are between 1 and 3 acres in size.
3. Using your scroll wheel and mouse, zoom in on your map until it looks similar to this:

This gets your map very close to where it needs to be, but the director wants the map printed at a scale where 1 inch equals an even number of feet, such as 400 feet or 500 feet. This will allow him to use a ruler to check the distances between features in the map easily.

4. Check the current scale of your map frame by looking at the scale window located in the lower left-hand corner of the map view.

Can you specify what your current scale is?

Your scale should be somewhere between 1:4600 and 1:5600, depending on the size of your monitor. This is very close to a scale that would make 1 inch equal 400 feet. 1:4800 scale is equal to 1 inch, equaling 400 feet if your map is set to use feet as its units.

5. Type 1:4800 into the scale cell located in the lower left corner of the view area as illustrated in the following screenshot:

6. If required, use the Explore tool from the Map tab to pan your map some more until all the parcels in the Commercial Propertiesfrom 1 to 3 AC layer are visible.

7. Once you have verified that all the parcels of interest are visible, click on the Layout tab in the ribbon, and then click on the Close Activation button.

8. Save your project.

Let's move on to the last step, which is adding the other elements.

Step 4 – Adding other elements

You are very close to completing your layout. You just need to add a few more elements to your layout, such as a title, north arrow, legend, and scale:

1. Click on the Insert tab in the ribbon. From here, you can insert various elements into your layout.
2. Using your scroll wheel, zoom into the lower center of your layout, which is blank. This is where you will place the title.

3. Click on the small drop-down arrow, located to the right of the Dynamic Text option, and select Name of Map. You should use the name of the map that you added to the layout:

As you can see from the preceding screenshot, Dynamic Text is the text that references a specific property of the map frame, project, layout,or your computer system. Dynamic text will automatically update if the value for the specific property changes.

4. Click on a blank area in the layout to place the text. Once you click on a location, the name of the map referenced in Map Frame should appear. You will need to make some edits to its properties so that it appears correctly.
5. Click on the Format tab that appears in the ribbon. This should also cause the Format Text pane to open. If the pane does not open, right click on the Text item which appears in the Contents pane and select Properties from the menu that appears.
6. In the Format Text pane, expand the General option and rename this element Title, as in the following screenshot. If the Format Text pane does not appear, double-click on the text you just added to open it:

7. Expand the Text option, located below General. In the field located below Text, delete the text string Name of Map: from the window so that you can only see mapName. Then, click on another area of the pane—for example, click on the Name field to apply the change, as in the following screenshot:

8. Go back to the Format tab in the ribbon. Make the following adjustments to the size and position of the text in order to center it at the bottom of the layout and make it large enough to adjust the font size:
   • Set 18.5 in for the Width field.
   • Set 1.5 infor theHeightfield.
   • Set 14.75 infor theXfield.
   • Set 3 infor theYfield.

9. In the Text Symbol group, set your font size to 72 pt so that it fills up most of the text box area.
10. Now, we want to center-justify the title. Go back to the Format Text pane and click on the Text Symbol tab, as in the following screenshot:

11. Click on the General button located below the Text Symbol tab. The icon for this button is the letter A with a small paint brush below it.
12. Expand the Position option by clicking on the small arrow so that you can see the options underneath.
13. For Horizontal Alignment, click on the CenterJustification icon and click Apply.
14. Close the Format Text pane.
15. Save your project.

You have now configured the title for your map layout. As you have seen, this often serves as the main identifier for the purpose of the map.

16. Now, you need to insert a north arrow. Make sure the Insert tab is active and click on the drop-down arrow below North Arrow. Select a north arrow style you like, such as ArcGIS North 1. (I generally like to keep it simple since the north arrow is only a small element in a larger picture.)
17. Click anywhere to the left of the title you just added to place the north arrow.
18. Click on the Format tab in the ribbon. Make the following adjustments to the size and position:
    • Set 1.2 infor theWidthfield.
    • Set 2.5 infor the Height field.
    • Set 2.8 infor the Xfield.
    • Set 2.75 infor the Yfield.

This will place a north arrow similar to ArcGIS North 1 in the lower left-hand corner of the layout. If you chose a longer north arrow style, such as ArcGIS North 4, then you may need to make additional adjustments to the size and position to get the arrow to fit appropriately. Use your judgment as to what looks best. Remember that this is a chance for you to exercise some artistic flare.

19. Save your project.
20. Zoom in to the area between the north arrow and map title.
21. Activate the Insert tab in the ribbon and click on the words Scale Bar under the icon to make the different types of scale bars you can insert appear.
22. Select the Double Alternating 4 scale bar in the Imperial group. It should be the last one in the group.
23. Click on a location between the north arrow and title where you want to place the scale bar.

When it appears in the layout, it will be larger than you need and will overlap on the title. We will fix all that next.

24. Select the Design tab in the Scale Bar context tab. This tab allows you to control various design settings for the scale bar. Since the director wants the scale to be in inches, you need to make some adjustments to the scale bar.
25. A 1:4800 ratio is the same as 1 inch for 400 feet. So, you need to adjust your scale bar to show that. Change the resize behavior to adjust the number of divisions. This will keep the division spacing from changing, allowing you to set it so that the divisions are shown in inch increments.
26. Set the units to US Feet in the Units group on the Design tab.
27. Change Division Value to 400. This sets the division increments so that they are 1 inch.
28. Next, click on the Format tab in the ribbon so that you can adjust the size and position of the scale bar:
    • Set 6.5 infor theWidthfield.
    • Set 1.0 infor the Height field.
    • Set 7.0 infor the Xfield.
    • Set 2.5 infor the Yfield.
29. In the Text Symbol group in the Format tab, set the font size to 18 pt.

30. Click on the Layout tab and click on the Full Extent button, located in the Navigate group.

Your layout should now look similar to the following. Your north arrow and scale bar may look different, depending on which style you selected:

31. Save your project.

You have just created your first layout from start to finish. This is a very simple and clean layout. There are many more things that you could add, such as a legend, an organizational logo, a disclaimer, data source citation, and more. If you would like to try to add other items to your layout, try the Challenge 1 section.

As you have seen, creating a layout takes many steps, even to create just a very simple one. You can create and use layout templates to help make this process shorter. You will learn about that in the next section.

Challenge 1

Using the skills you learned to insert a north arrow and scale bar, add a legend to your layout. Now, position the legend in the lower-right corner of the layout to help balance its overall appearance.

Exercise 6B – Creating and using a layout template

The director was very happy with the map you made for his meeting and now wants another one. He wants a map printed in the same size but that shows all the commercially zoned parcels in the city.

In this exercise, you will use the layout that you created in the last exercise to create a template file. You will then use that template to create a new layout.

Step 1 – Saving a template file

In this step, you will create a template layout based on the layout you created in the last exercise:

1. Ensure you still have the layout that you created in Exercise 6A open. If not, go to the Catalog pane, expand the Layout folder, right-click on Layout, and select Open.
2. Click on the Sharing tab on the ribbon.
3. Click on the Layout File button in the Save As group tab.
4. In the Save LayoutasPAGX File window, select your C: drive and then navigate to C:StudentIntroArcProMy Projects.
5. Name the new layout file Layout Template and click Save.

You have just created a layout file that can be used as a template for other layouts. New layouts based on this template will contain all the same standardized elements.

Step 2 – Creating a new layout using the layout file

You will now use the file you created in the previous step to add a new layout to your project:

1. Click on the Insert tab in the ribbon.
2. Click on the small drop-down arrow located next to New Layout.
3. Select Import a Layout File, which is located near the bottom of the displayed window.
4. In the Import window, navigate to C:StudentIntroArcProMy Projects and select the Layout Template.pagx file you created in Step 1.

A new layout has been added to your project that looks exactly like the layout you created in the last exercise. Now, you will need to configure the layout to display the correct map and make adjustments to a few of the elements.

Step 3 – Configuring the new layout

In this step, you will configure the layout to display a map that shows all the commercially zoned parcels in the city:

1. Double-click on the Select the Commercial Between 1 to 3acres map frame in the Contents pane to open the FormatMap Frame pane so that you can adjust the properties.
2. Click on the Options button in the Format Map Frame pane.
3. Expand the Map Frame option if needed.
4. Click on the drop-down arrow for the Map option and select Commercially Zoned Prop. This assigns the correct map to display in the layout.
5. Change the element name to Commercially Zoned Property and press the Enter key.

So that the title appears with the word property spelled out fully, you need to change the name of the map that is being displayed, since the title is in dynamic text.

6. Select the Commercial Zoned Prop tab at the top of the map view. This will make that map visible. If this map has been closed, you can open it from the Catalog pane by right-clicking on it and selecting Open.
7. In the Contents pane, right-click on Commercial Zoned Prop and select Properties.

8. In the General properties, rename the map Commercially Zoned Property and click OK.
9. Click back on the new layout that you have created. (Hint: it may be named Layout1 or Layout2.)

The title should now be changed to reflect the new name of the map displayed in the map frame. Now, you need to adjust the scale of the map so that it displays all the commercially zoned properties, and the legend so that it shows your layers.

10. Using the skills that you learned in Exercise 6A, change your scale to 1:7200 so that you can see all the commercially zoned properties in the city, as requested by the director.
11. If you completed the challenge in the previous exercise, select the legend in the Contents pane.
12. If required, expand the contents of the legend so that you can see which layers are included in the legend.
13. Click on the Layers drop-down menu and turn on all the layers by clicking on the box located next to each layer name.

Once done, your layout should look like the one in the following screenshot. If you did not complete Challenge 1 from the previous exercise, your layout will not contain a legend:

You have just created a new layout using a layout file as a template. It automatically included the same style north arrow and scale bar. All the layout elements were properly positioned. After making some simple adjustments, you quickly created a new layout that is ready for printing.

Challenge 2

You had to change the scale in the new layout that you created so that the scale bar no longer has divisions that are 1 inch in size. See whether you can adjust the scale bar so that the divisions are once again 1 inch in size. It just so happens that 1:7200 equals 1 inch = 600 feet.

Summary

As you have seen, layouts allow you to present your efforts in a professional manner, allowing others to appreciate them. In this chapter, you learned that there are three basic considerations that you need to take into account as you design your layout—the purpose, audience, and situation. You now know how these considerations can impact the design of your layout and how to respond to those impacts.

Once you design your layout, you will need to implement the design within ArcGIS Pro. This will include adding several elements, such as a north arrow, a scale, a title, and more. This chapter has provided you with the skills to insert and configure many of the commonly included elements found in a layout.

Lastly, you learned how to create a layout file that can be used as a template for future layouts you need to create. This allows you to standardize layout elements across projects within your organization, which will help brand your maps and speed up their production.

In the next chapter, you will expand on the skills you learned in this one and learn how to create map books or atlases using the Map Series functionality. Map books are helpful in many situations, such as for use in the field by repair or inspection crews or for the inclusion of maps within a report.