Utah Counties, Pen & Paper

"Pen and Paper" asks for a hand-drawn feel without actually picking up a pen, and John Nelson's pen-style symbol sets in ArcGIS Pro make that possible directly inside the same software used for every other day of the challenge. This entry applies it to Utah's 29 counties and their county seats, sourced from UGRC's boundary and city-location layers.

Minimalist by design

The goal was restraint: clean county boundaries, simple seat markers, and enough visual texture to feel sketched rather than plotted — a deliberate contrast to the data-dense maps elsewhere in the challenge, and a good showcase for how far symbology alone can shift a map's tone.

Created for the “Pen & Paper” theme of the 2024 #30DayMapChallenge, using UGRC county boundary and city/town location data.