Cartography using ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud

For the past year or so, I’ve been part of a team at Esri that is developing the ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud application. Our goal is that this extension will provide Adobe Creative Cloud users with web maps so that they can download these maps directly into their Adobe design environment from ArcGIS Online. For example, with ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud, a  user  can  sign  into  their ArcGIS  Online  account  directly  from  Illustrator,  find geographic  content  that  fits  their  map  requirements,  and download this content into their Adobe Illustrator file. It is a seamless  workflow  since cartographers  and  designers  can create a map with spatial data without having to leave Adobe Illustrator.  The  result  is  a  vector  map  containing specifications  that  are  set  by  the  user. Designers and cartographers can then leverage Illustrator’s graphic editing power to design their map as they desire.

There  are  a  lot  of  mapping  and  GIS  organizations  and companies who have a GIS analyst or team and a designer or team  of  designers.  These two  groups,  GIS  analysts  and graphic designers, often have different priorities during their map-making  process,  and  this  application  we’ve  been developing  provides  a  collaborative  tool  for  analysts and designers  to  work  together  in  their  organization’s  map-production  workflow.  GIS analysts can add  their  well-prepared  and  precisely  analyzed  map  data  to  their organization’s  ArcGIS  Online  account,  and  designers  can easily  access  this  data  from  Adobe  Creative  Cloud applications. Allowing designers the opportunity to create their maps in a graphic design tool that they are familiar with greatly improves the map editing workflow efficiency and results. Of course there is the third type of user – the person who is skilled at both GIS and graphic design. The ArcGIS for Adobe Creative Cloud application is a great tool for these users as well.

A lot of static mapping is completed in Adobe Illustrator. In fact, as a cartographer myself, this is how I create most of my static maps, and even some design for interactive mapping. The GIS-export-to-Adobe Illustrator workflow for static mapping is  the  one  I  was  trained  to  follow  at  the  University  of Wisconsin-Madison. After I was hired as a cartographer at Kulshan  Cartographic  Services  in  Bellingham  I  discovered that this workflow is also common practice in the professional cartography world. Now that I am at Esri, it is very exciting to be part of a team that is making this process a lot easier and reproducible.

We have been conducting usability testing, and our plan is to have the beta version of ArcGIS for Adobe Creative Cloud released around the same time as our Esri User Conference this June. Visit esri.com/adobecc for more information and to sign up to be notified when the beta version is available.