New in locator maps: Pick from more icons or upload your own

On locator maps, markers play a big role: they show where something is located or happened.

Starting today, you can place more visually consistent markers on your locator maps, with more ways to make them stand out from the map and a wider range of icons to choose from. And if our selection isn’t enough, you can even upload your own.

All of this lets you build more beautiful maps that are easier for your readers to understand. The new marker features are available to everyone, including those on the Free plan.

Let’s look at the details:

Pick from our improved icon set

Locator maps can be about a wide range of topics, so they need a wide range of marker icons. We built on top of the 132 icons we already offered in our locator maps:

You’ll find 27 new icons in our core set, including seven arrow icons, icons for places like apartment buildings, bridges, and tunnels, and military icons like drones, bomber planes, and air defence.

We also added 816 Google Material Icons in an extra set in our icon picker. Like the icons in our core set, they can be used free of charge and without attribution, even for commercial projects.

What’s more, we made all icons in our core set more visually consistent in details like border radii, stroke widths, and spacing. And to help you quickly find the icon you need, you can now browse icons by category or search for them directly.

Upload your own icons

If you’re going for a certain look in your locator map or can’t find what you’re looking for in our almost 1,000 default icons, you can now upload your own. Simply add them to your locator map as SVGs and adjust their color(s) and anchor point:

All uploaded icons are saved as part of the map, so every team member can pick up editing. And if your organization uses a custom theme as part of your Datawrapper plan, you can add your custom icons permanently to the icon picker. Just reach out to us.

Customize your markers more

Markers can look messy on a busy locator map background. That’s why you can now give your marker icon a colored background in one of six shapes and add a colored outline. Both make your markers stand out more from the underlying map, but can also tie them together visually with a shared color.

We also added more marker icons in which you can insert text (now up to three characters). This is useful for showing an order of events on your map, for highway signs, and more. Our new preview shows you how each icon looks with your chosen text before you pick one.

These text icons are not restricted to our default icon set – you can even turn an icon you’ve uploaded into a text icon.

It all works: multi-editing, dark mode, map key

We made sure that the new marker features work as you’d expect from our locator maps. You can style the icon of multiple markers at once, and the icons adjust their colors in dark mode.

And because the markers on your map might be easier to distinguish in the map key if they come without a background or stroke, you can switch both off.

Thanks to Moritz Kuhn (lead designer) and Pascal Bürkle who worked on this feature.

We hope this latest addition helps you build even better locator maps. To play around with the new marker icons, create a new locator map here, or learn more about them in our Academy. If you have any questions or feedback, please reach us at support@datawrapper.de. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.