How to Draw a Town Map With Adobe Illustrator
66A simple town map is a snapshot overview of your town. Whether you are drawing the town map as part of a social studies project for school or if you are sending it to friends who are going to be coming to visit, drawing a map is a good way to remember exactly where things are. You can download a free map-drawing program. According to Designer Freelance, the important thing to remember about drawing maps online is to create the layers for each step and then lock them into place before proceeding.
A simple town map still conveys a lot of information.
Draw in the primary roads and bridges. Use the pen tool to mark in the lines, but don’t fill them yet. Think of this as the skeleton of your town map, to which all over information is derived.
Pick your font size. Select the lines and set the big stroke. This action will fill in the black lines and give you a black edge around your roads and streets.
Duplicate the layer. Design Freelance suggests that you lock in the original layer, then change the color to yellow.
Add the secondary streets. Create another layer and repeat the same steps. Make the roads smaller by reducing the font and make them white instead of yellow, so they won’t be confused with the major roads. Arrange your layers in order.
Include public areas such as parks, swimming pools and rinks. Again, name them so that people know the oblong space is a swimming pool and not a curing rink. This layer will be behind the ones for the major roads and secondary streets.
Lock the layers and work on the streets. Reproduce the yellow road layer and type in the names of the principal roads. Use the text tool and adjust the base line. Adjust the name so it is in the middle of the street by using the character panel adjust.
Add the secondary street names. Use the same lock and save process as you did with the primary roads. Be sure to the character panel adjust for a finished effect.
Include the public buildings, such as schools, hospitals, senior-citizen care facilities, as well as the police station and the fire hall. Write the names of these main services clearly establish which is which.
Designer Freelance: How to Draw a Map in Illustrator
http://www.designerfreelance.net/how-to-draw-a-map-in-illustrator/
University of Western Ontario: Drawing Lab 1: Drawing a Simple Map
