1. Vector Vogue Styling Vector Basemaps to Suit Your Needs Kate Leroux
GIS Analyst/Cartographer
SEATTLE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Washington URISA Conference, May 2017
I maintain a raster roads basemap for the City of Seattle. We’re an Esri customer, so as soon as Esri released vector tiles, I jumped on it and began experimenting and learning.

2. Why you might style them How to style them Where to find them Demo
Vector Vogue
What are vector tiles?
Why you might style them
How to style them
Where to find them
Demo
Here’s what I’ll cover.

3. Vector tiles are here! It is the future and you can have whatever style you want.
Image credit: Gareth Pugh via Vogue (

4. What are vector tiles? Data pre-cached tile by tile
Only relevant tiles are downloaded
Each tile contains vector data
Much smaller to store
Much faster to cache
Image rendered on the client side
Faster performance
Image is vector, not raster
Better image quality
Until very recently, basemaps were tiled raster images.
They’re faster than serving all those layers live because the graphics placement and rendering are done in advance, on the server, as the tiles are created.
Vector tiles, a new technology, are different and better in almost every way. Here’s a visualization of how they work. The vector data and a style file are downloaded by the browser, which then renders the graphics (on the client side).
ArcGIS vector tiles use the industry-standard Mapbox specification. This is a very good thing.
Image credit: Katie Kowalsky, Mapzen

5. How much smaller / faster / better?
Raster Tiles
Vector Tiles
Size of cache
32.9 GB
56.7 MB
Cache time
261.5 hours
(10.9 days)
5 min 29 sec
Page load
~10 sec (AGOL map)
Image quality
Pixelated on zoom
Smooth at any resolution
582 X
+261 hr
This is for a roads basemap I maintain at the City.
The raster cache is hundreds of times the size of the vector cache, and takes 261 hours longer.
Browser load time is comparable on my work desktop and my personal laptop.

6. How much smaller / faster / better?
This is using the browser’s zoom feature. Good in case someone has trouble reading small text (a good accessibility feature).
Raster at 200% browser zoom
Vector at 200% browser zoom

7. You can change the style lightning-fast
Best of all...
Think of the map’s style file like a layer file in ArcMap: it contains just the symbolization and no data.
You can change the style without modifying the data, unlike in a raster cache.
I’ll tell you how to do it in a few minutes.
Image source: Benzinga (
You can change the style lightning-fast
without recaching!

8. First, some drawbacks...
Publishing from ArcGIS Pro to AGOL = mediocre quality
Must refine the style manually, including:
• Text size • Line wrapping • Leading • Layer order
Newer technology = occasional bugs & errors
Some symbol effects are not supported
• Offset lines
Requires modern graphics card & browser (WebGL)
Special config required to not use Web Mercator
Attribute data doesn’t come along easily
These are the major issues. There are also a whole host of smaller bugs and issues that affect the creation and publishing of vector tiles using Pro.
“Vector tile layers have the best performance on machines with newer hardware, and they can be displayed in Internet Explorer 11 and later and most other current versions of desktop browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Note: Vector tile layers are only supported in apps built with ArcGIS API for JavaScript. This includes configurable apps, Web AppBuilder, and custom apps built with ArcGIS API for JavaScript. ArcGIS Runtime SDKs will add support in a future release.”
Quote from

9. What you won’t learn in this session:
How to publish your own vector tile layer from Pro
Default result isn’t great
By default, all the text is one-third larger than it should be, and lines aren’t wrapped very often.
This causes a lot of collisions and therefore, a lot fewer labels are displayed.
Getting it to look right is time-consuming and manual.
Instead you can take advantage of someone else’s work and use an existing vector tile map.
Out of the box
Fixed by hand

10. What you WILL learn:
How you can modify the style of an existing vector tile layer
Image source: Obsession magazine via Fashion Gone Rogue (
But why would you want to?

11. Customize the basemap for your needs
Example: parks
In the 1st example, I have changed the color of the parks and distinguished between types of parks by color. I also changed the font size and color. This is still just the vector basemap.
In the 2nd example, a parks feature class is added to the map. See how basemap labels are partially covered? You can selectively turn off any labels you don’t want while leaving the rest. Then you can add an active layer (to use things like pop-ups, etc). The lower image shows the basemap with all its features and labels EXCEPT park labels.
Change color & label size
Remove unwanted labels

12. Customize the basemap for your needs
Example: utility lines
When you need to add layers that cover roads, the road labels are covered.
With vector tiles, it’s easy to offset the labels so they’re more visible.
Other thing you can change include text offset, rotation, changing the case, and transparency.
Utility lines cover road labels
Offset road labels

13. Example: new color palette
Customize the basemap for your needs
Example: new color palette
Light grey, similar to Esri, makes your data pop.
Colors for branding (Go Sounders!)
High-contrast
You can choose to remove any layer and/or its labels if you want a simpler basemap.
I created these myself from my new vector tiles.

14. Infinite design possibilities
ESRI
MAPBOX
ESRI
Here are some fun examples from mapping companies, including Esri
ESRI
STAMEN
STAMEN
MAPBOX

15. There are two ways to do it
Esri Style Editor
Sign in & choose layer
Make changes
Update Item
ArcGIS Online
Copy the master layers in a map
Save the copies to My Content
Download style
Update style
Refresh the map
You start and finish in ArcGIS Online.
From there, you can use the Esri Style Editor, a web-based user interface, which is easier to use.
Or, you can edit the JSON text directly, where you may find it easier to copy/paste, re-order things, and search/replace (depending on your comfort with code-like text).
You can use any text editor. I prefer one called Brackets that has syntax checking, indenting, and highlighting.
Either way, the process takes only a few minutes for a small change.
Esri Style Editor:
Brackets:
More:
Edit JSON text
Plain text editor

16. Let’s take a look at them...
Image credit: Dalida in Alain Mikli sunglasses (

17. Esri Style Editor
You can toggle layers on and off using the checkboxes.
It shows you on what zoom levels it is visible.
You can see the colors associated with a layer.
Esri Style Editor:

18. Esri Style Editor
On the Find By Color tab, you can find everywhere a specific color appears (and replace it with a different color).
There’s a standard color selector.

19. Esri Vector Basemaps Reference
You will probably want to refer to this reference document that explains all the layers in the Esri vector basemaps.
Esri vector basemaps reference doc:
Esri Style Editor:

20. JSON style file ANY numeric setting can have stops
Label
Feature
JSON is a plain-text format that gives data a structure. It’s similar to XML.
Let’s look at a single feature and its labels to get a sense of the properties you can set.
For any numeric property, you can add “stops”, which show the property setting at different scale levels.
It’s not just text and halo size, but also things like color, transparency, spacing, rotation, and offset.
ANY numeric setting can have stops
‘Stops’ allow settings by zoom level

21. Zoom levels and scale: they’re backwards
1:300 21
1:600 20
1:1200 19
1:2400 18
1:4800 17
1:9600 16
1:19,200 15
1:38,400 14
1:76,800 13
1:153,600 12
1:307,200 11
1:614,400 10
1:1,228,800 9
It’s confusing at first!
We’re used to setting scale levels from, say, 1:300 through 1:600 (and you’d set it at 1:300). In the vector world, that would be zoom level (and you’d set it at 20).
Where a setting starts and stops being displayed is different.
This is hard to wrap your brain around at first as you get into the details – watch for mistakes.
Image: Thierry Mugler Café de Paris collection via

22. Find vector tile basemaps on AGOL
Search for esri vector in Groups
Click on the Vector Basemaps group
Choose a Tile Layer and add to a new map
Be sure not to choose a web map (I’ll show you why).
Esri vector tile layers:
Esri vector basemaps reference doc:

23. Find vector tile basemaps on AGOL
Copy the layer
Save the copied layer
Remember that to change the style, you must make a personal copy first.
More help:
Esri vector tile layers:
Esri vector basemaps reference doc:
Enter layer info and create

24. Hey! I can’t copy the layer!
Find vector tile basemaps on AGOL
Hey! I can’t copy the layer!
No copy option
Important: if the vector layer is in the basemap of the AGOL map, you must move it out of there before you can make a copy.
In order to do this, you must add another layer, move that to the basemap, then move the desired label FROM the basemap.
More help:
If a layer is part of the basemap, it can’t be copied.
Move from Basemap or use a Tile Layer (not Web Map).

25. The detail page has some new buttons.
Find vector tile basemaps on AGOL
The detail page has some new buttons.
This is where you can download and upload the style JSON.
Esri vector basemaps reference doc:
Esri Style Editor:
More help:

26. Esri Style Editor shortcut
If you’re using this tool, you can skip the previous steps
The Esri Style Editor has a button that lets you easily make your own copy of an Esri basemap. You can use that shortcut to skip the steps I just showed you.
I showed you so you’ll know how to copy other vector tile layers not available this way.
Esri Style Editor:

27. Demo Time
Image credit: AMCONYC (

28. Slides: http://bit.ly/Vector_Vogue
Washington URISA Conference, May 2017
Image credit: cr-vision (