Last updated on December 28, 2011
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Ever been drawing a map and found yourself needing vector copies of symbols? Well, thanks to the great state of Minnesota there is a font containing most of these symbols freely available. On the state’s page Recreation Symbols Extension for ArcView one can download recreate.ttf, a 126-character TrueType font containing indicators for everything from XC ski trail difficulty to lighthouse locations and from winter camping sites to RV dump locations.
To make using this font easier I’ve created a spreadsheet-based key listing each of the symbols next to their corresponding Unicode character. This can be found here: Minnesota DNR Recreation Symbol True Type Font Key.xlsx
There’s a few other nifty things that Minnesota has provided to the general GIS community, including Road Symbols. The rest can be found here.
UPDATE: Here is another set of symbols provided by the National Park Service (NPS). These are much more up to date and provided as both PDF and .AI files.
There’s a few unintentionally amusing signs around here. On a local canal there’s a junction, if you go to the left you go into a lock and all is well, if you go to the right you fall off a small weir/waterfall. There’s helpfully (amongst other things… like chain and obstructions in the water) a sign up that says “Danger! Stay Left! Weir!” and a little warning sign of a boat going off the waterfall. All it’s missing is a person stood at the back going “Wheee!”.
Another place has a problem with cyanobacteria in the water and the warning sign for that is an unhappy face with blue spots all over it.
And finally, driving home yesterday I went down a piece of road that had a sign warning me of the dangerous nature of the road (“X people killed in the past 5 years” type of thing). The little pictogram on that was a car upside-down on its roof. My first reaction was not to pay more attention to the road, but to find it amusing.
Outside of my office there is an old school LED message board. There is an animation of a boxy car barreling into a martini glass. A stick figure flies out and bonks his head. DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE. Warm holiday regards, Buzz