guidance pages / documents for using maps

[AndyPorter]

a place for us to curate a list of good documents about using maps in public services...

primarily for the purpose of pre-reading for the services week - maps in services work - during which we'd like to create a guidance page for the Government service manual. So a good set of guidance to pre-read would allow us to start the week with a good idea about what are the common principles / things are that should go into a Gov service manual page

[AndyPorter]

https://hmlr-design-system-staging.herokuapp.com/guidance/maps/

At HM Land Registry we've drafted this 'preliminary' guidance for teams:

• Its on our design system staging server so available to anyone with the link
• by 'preliminary' we mean - its not tried and tested by anyone yet, it's our first go at having guidance for our teams, but it is based on work we've found across government and our experiences in 1 or 2 of our services
• Note: the page linked here has been updated following our content review, so looks different and reads better than what we showed on Wed 5th March

[AndyPorter]

Sources used at HM Land Registry to inform our work

DEFRA public wiki page on using interactive maps
DEFRA Design standards for maps
Digital Land – Map component
Transport for West Midlands, Map style
Ordnance Survey Labs contains tools and information for using maps. Of note is the GeoDataViz Toolkit, including their Cartographic design principles

Published on 27 Feb 2025 by MHCLG is Recommended standards for local authorities for their local plan policies maps including what themes to use, and what visual elements and symbology styles to apply.