Icons in OSM

On this page you will find details for the symbols (aka icons or pictograms) representing POIs on the OSM map. We would like to give you very detailed informations, focused on OSM and not graphic design in general.For more design tips please refer /Map Icons Standards, /WikiProject Pictograms

Cause every renderer and every generated map uses only a subset of the shared icon collections, this page is nescessary. You might have a look at Map features for an overview.

To request the design of a new icon please check out /Proposed Icons

Renderers

Mapnik

Mapnik colours

name	color
transport	#0092da
food, some amenity	#734a08
medical	#da0092
shopping	#ac39ac
tourism	#0092da
small details, money, man_made	#666666

The default Mapnik render stylesheet shown on osm.org

• .PNG at Mapnik SVN, .SVG picked from Brian Quinion Icon Collection (CC0 license)
• Add icon requests via OSM Trac ticket, maintained by User:Ldp,user:Steve8

design policy:

• serious+balanced visual style -> recycle icon components if you reuse them (e.g. key symbol for xyz_rental=*)
• 16px, single colour and no shading
• complex enough for even 48px icons
• flat icon style, no perspective
• strict lines, antialiased but not rounded

Osmarender

Second popular osmarender view on the OpenStreetMap data, published by osm.org

• .PNG at osmarender SVN, .SVG picked from /Map Icons Collection (overview, mostly PD license)
• Add icon requests via OSM Trac ticket, maintained by ? or edit the stylesheets from SVN yourself

design policy:

• show as much features as possible, let the users decide
• see Osmarender/Symbols

See also

• Rendering

Other OSM projects

• Potlatch flash online editor - .PNG at Potlatch2 SVN
• JOSM offline editor - .PNG at JOSM SVN, .SVG picked from /Map Icons Collection (overview)
• Navit Linux Navigation System - .PNG, .SVG, .XPM at Navit SVN
• Traveling Salesman testing router - .PNG at SVN picked from /Map Icons Collection
• OpenStreetBrowser - symbols (file names all start with "OSB_")
• FreieTonne - Symbols
• OpenSeaMap - Symbols

See also

• Software
• List of OSM based Services
• Logos

License

Icons designs are of course copyrightable creative works, but it's such a shame to introduce awkward niggling legal doubts, hampering the use of what is essentially a very basic element of a graphical map. As such it is sensible to release icon designs with a public domain or CC0 license. Some icon sets listed on this page are released as such. We should aim to state clearly where there are exceptions to this (but users may wish to double-check with the original artists)

Icon Software

Cause we prefer .SVG vectorgraphics to fork different resolutions out of one icon we recommend to create your icon with e.g. Inkscape, OpenOffice Draw or similar tools. To work with the finalised .PNG we recommend Gimp

Matching Map Icons with Map Features

As the category and icon names don't match the OSM map features tags, you'll need to match a map feature with an icon:

The JOSM "ex mappaint" style has a wide range of mappings of OSM map features to the icons, see: elemstyles.xml - it's probably a very good idea that JOSM and other programs will show the same icons for the same map features.

To create a more "map features" like structure of the icons, you can call the script create_osm.sh. Based on an XSLT transformation of the above mentioned elemstyles.xml, this script creates a directory called osm. Then you'll have a set of directories named after the map features keys (e.g. highway) containing icons named after the values (e.g. stop.png). Please note:

• the different icon themes will have a varying level of completeness of the OSM features, classic.small will have the most complete set of them
• for the XSLT transformation, you'll need xsltproc from the libxslt package installed

Internal Icon collections

• /Proposed_Icons
• /WikiProject Pictograms
• Project of the week - Be artistic!
• User:Batchoy#My_alternative_unified_symbols
• User:UrSuS
• User:Sergionaranja's 2020 Iconset
• Category:Icon

External Icon Resources

• OSGeo Map Symbol set
• Map Icons Collection with custom colouring
• Professional association of American graphics - Symbol Signs (and on Wikimedia Commons)
• US Park Service - Map Symbols & Patterns for NPS Maps (downloadable in structured form)
• PIANC nautical symbols
• Wikimedia Commons - Nautical Chart Icons (reference here)

External Symbol Resources

• OpenLayers Symbols
• thenounproject.com - mostly PD, some CC licensed.
• OpenClipart.org
• Wikimedia Commons

Other Icon Tips

• /Map Icons Standards
• Tango Icon Theme Guidelines
• Pictograms, Icons & Signs - Roger Hubner , ISBN 0500286353.