To help Local Guides explore their own cities and beyond, we’ve created 48 Hours in… My Maps that highlight places in cities that Local Guides recommend on Google Maps. These My Maps have become so popular that many of you have created your own My Maps for the cities you know and love and we want to help you to create beautiful My Maps, too. — and there are more to come!—.
Starting with the Best of Barcelona My Map the Local Guides team created in January 2016 for the Mobile World Congress, we shared a link to the My Maps icons in our newsletter. For your mapping pleasure, we present to you the My Maps icons.
So, how do you create a My Map? Easy. Follow this step-by-step process:
- Visit My Maps on your computer or with the Google Maps app on your Android phone
- Click on “Create a new map” or on the + symbol to start with an empty map
- Add a title and a description to your newly created map.
- Change the name of your only layer (that currently has no title)
- Add up to 10 layers in total to distribute your places as you see fit
- Start looking for places and add them to the map by clicking on “+ Add to map”
As a reference, for our 48 Hours in… My Maps we used these layers: Dining out, Cafes & Bakeries, Nightlife, Accommodation, Tourist spots, Arts & Cultures and Shopping, to give every visitor to these cities a glimpse on what’s best in the city to enjoy it for 48 hours (or more!).
How to personalise your places on the map
Once you have added a place to your My Map, you’ll see a blue pin, but there’s much more that you can do. See the three options we’ve marked in the screenshot below? With the bucket icon (first one on the left) you can change the style of the icon, with the pencil icon you can change the name and add a brief description of the place and with the camera icon, you can add a photo of that place, although if you don’t add one, My Maps will show you one from that place’s Google Maps listing.
Let’s focus on how to add those beautiful icons.Click on the bucket icon to change the icon style and you’ll see a popup that lets you select the icon colour and the icon itself. But in this case, we are going for something different. So click on “more icons” in that popup. You’ll see something like the following screenshot, where you’ll find a lot of different shapes and categories for icons. In most cases, these are more than enough to create beautiful and useful My Maps.
If you want to add an icon not listed there or you want to personalise your map, click on “Custom icon” and in the next screen, select the icon from your computer (or drag and drop it), and you are all set. In the example, I added the suitcase icon, as you can see. After clicking “ok”, the place you just saved in your My Maps will have this new icon.
And once you have added an icon for the first time, you don’t have to re-upload it again for other places that share the same icon. But if you start a new My Maps, then you’ll have to follow the same process as listed here.
As a tip, try not to use too many different icons. Maybe one or sometimes two per layer is enough. As an example taken from our own 48 Hours in… My Maps, we’ve used one for all restaurants, two different ones for cafes & bakeries (depending on the specialization of the place, whether it’s coffee or cakes), two different ones for nightlife (depending on the type of venue, whether is a general one or a live music place), one for accommodation, two for tourist spots (one for general spots and another one for parks), one for arts & culture places and one or two for shopping.
So if you have already created a My Map of your area, you can change your icons or maybe you want to create a new My Map using this beautiful icon set.
Whatever’s the case, please create a post in the “Travel and Advice” board with your My Maps, so we can all benefit from them!
Official 48 Hours in… My Maps created by Google Local Guides
- 48 Hours in Nairobi
- 48 Hours in Montreal
- 48 Hours in Boston
- 48 Hours in Santiago (Chile)
- 48 Hours in Dubai
- 48 Hours in Bristol
- 48 Hours in Melbourne
- 48 Hours in Las Vegas
- 48 Hours in Florence
- 48 Hours in Seoul
48 hours in…My Maps created by Local Guides community members
- 48 Hours in Querétaro
- 48 Hours in Milan
- 48 Hours in Rome
- 48 Hours in Tehran
- 48 Hours in Delhi
- 48 Hours in Comilla
- 48 Hours in Chittagong
- 48 Hours in Ikoma
- 48 Hours in Bucharest
- 48 Hours in Rivne
- 48 Hours in Prague
- 48 Hours in Venice
Other My Maps created by Local Guides
