Map styles

Every survey map, online and on the printed form, sits on a map style. Your workspace’s styles live in one place, Map styles in the sidebar under Library, and any of them can be picked in any survey.

What is there

• Streets, Satellite, Topo — the general-purpose base maps.
• Paper A — a clean street map made for printing: white ground, cased streets with names, no shop icons, city names only when zoomed out. A pen mark stays visible on a greyscale copy.
• Paper B — the planner’s map: white streets, bold street names, light-green parks, teal water.
• Your styles — copies you made, under your own names.

Each card shows a piece of the map around your newest survey and how many of your surveys use the style.

Pick a style for a survey

1. Open the survey’s Settings and find Base maps.
2. Tick the styles respondents may switch between and choose the Default base map.
3. A single section can use a different base map: open the section’s map picker and set Override base map.

The printed form uses the same style as the section it prints.

Make your own

1. Press New style at the top of the page and choose what to start from: Streets, Paper A or Paper B.
2. The new style opens in the editor straight away. Give it a name, change what you like and press Save.
3. Its hosted map is published in a few seconds; then the style is ready to pick in survey settings.

Duplicate on a card does the same starting from that card’s style, and also opens the copy in the editor. Satellite and Topo cannot be a starting point.

Creating and editing styles is a Pro feature; the trial includes two styles. Using a style that already exists — a preset or your own — never needs Pro, so a survey keeps its map if a subscription lapses.

Edit a style

The editor shows the controls on the left and the map on the right, framed at one of your surveys (pick another in the dropdown above the map).

• What stays on the map — place icons and names, footpaths, route shields and arrows, relief and ferries, regional boundaries, buildings. Untick what a paper map does without.
• Colours — land, parks, water, national borders, street and city names, water and district names. Pick a swatch or type a colour like #dcefd2. A warning under a colour means it is hard to tell apart from the land on a photocopy.
• Roads and labels — the road look (light, medium, strong), bold street names, the zoom up to which city and region names show, and Greyscale for a map that is black and white from the start.

Every change repaints the map at once. Press Save to publish the new version; it takes a few seconds and the name field saves with it. The Print tab shows the last published version as the printed form renders it; tick As a photocopy to see it in greyscale.

A survey that is already published keeps the version it was published with until you publish it again; drafts and the editor preview always use the newest one.

Export and import a style

Export on a card downloads the style as one small JSON file; Import a style at the top of the page reads such a file into this workspace and publishes it like a copy. That is how a house style travels between your workspaces — or to a colleague’s.

The file carries only the style itself:

{
  "format": "mapsurvey-map-style",
  "version": 1,
  "name": "House style",
  "base": "mapbox/streets-v12",
  "settings": { "poi": false, "park": "#cfe6b8", "water": "#2f8f86" }
}

No identifiers of your account or workspace are in it. On import the settings go through the same controls the editor has, so a file cannot do more than the editor can; a name already in the library gets a number after it. Importing counts as creating a style (a Pro feature); exporting needs Pro too.

Delete a style

Delete works only when no survey uses the style. If one does, the message names it: choose another base map there first.

Still stuck?

Write to us from the ? menu.