Mapbox Outdoors redesign

Nicki Dlugash
Thu, 19 May 2016 12:30:00 -0400

Last week we launched a redesign of Mapbox Outdoors, our general use map tailored for hiking, biking, and the most adventurous use cases. It now incorporates more lightly styled road and transit details for navigational context, but remains focused on terrain and the most important outdoor features.

Beautiful mountains

From the highest summits to rolling hills, Mapbox Outdoors showcases the elevation of the land. At low and mid zoom levels, detailed hillshading describes the terrain without obscuring other important features, like place labels, administrative borders, and major road systems.

Alpine countries.

At high zoom levels, high-contrast contour lines and labels give more precise details about an ascent’s slope. Prominent mountain peak labels (with elevation) highlight these significant natural landmarks.

The Matterhorn, standing tall.

Natural features and green space

Mapbox Outdoors displays large parks, such as national parks, in a traditional tint band style to delineate park borders and more clearly reveal the features within the park.

Boundary of Ordesa National Park, Spain.

We’ve designed this map with more differentiation between parks and other green space and landcover, such as golf courses, gardens, zoos, and woods.

Woods, parks, and golf courses around Epping Forest, UK.

Additional information for agricultural landuse adds context to otherwise sparse areas.

Farmlands in Reedley, CA.

We’ve also highlighted other natural landcover and features – such as glaciers, wetlands, cliffs, and rivers – using unique colors and patterns.

Wetlands in Okavango Delta, Botswana.

Highly visible and distinct paths

Many outdoor activities take place along paths, not high-speed highways. We visually separated paths from other roads and brought them to the foreground, so path networks are obvious at a glance. Since not all paths are equally relevant for all activities, we created distinct styling for walking paths, cycleways, trails, stairs, tracks, and ski paths.

Cycleways and paths in Washington, DC.

Ski paths in Whistler, BC.

Points of interest for outdoor activities

Mapbox Outdoors features prioritized labels for outdoor amenities, such as public toilets, drinking fountains, and picnic sites. In addition, we’ve filtered out the clutter of smaller, less relevant POIs so you can focus on that bike path or park entrance – not every clothing store and dental office.

Outdoor amenities and major POIs in and around the Esplanade and Boston Public Garden.

Explore Mapbox Outdoors further, and start building with it today!