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Best practices

Best Practices — Styling

Guidance for the visualization styles that core requires. These are recommendations, not requirements.

  • Create multiple data-driven styles for rich collections. If a collection has interesting categorical or numeric attributes, offer a style for each, e.g. buildings by age, by use, or by height. Mark the default one by giving its asset a default role alongside style.

  • Vary default colors across a catalog so it is not monotone. Use the subject matter as a guide: water in blues, vegetation in greens, the built environment in warm tones. Each collection should have a visually distinct default.

  • Use MapLibre GL expressions to reveal patterns. Leverage interpolate, match, case, and step to encode data into color, and include a description explaining what the colors represent.

  • Consider labels. For collections with named features (roads, monuments, admin areas), include a label layer or a dedicated "with labels" style variant.