You can fully customize the legend to serve as a title for your map, with the newly available legend features
There are situations where for the specific map you create, its color categories are pretty easy to make out or don’t need to have labels at all.
In this example, we are making a world map showing the four-color theorem from mathematics, which goes like this:
“Any map can be colored using just four colors in such a way that regions sharing a common boundary (other than a single point) do not share the same color.”
As you can check on the map, this is certainly possible. All countries have been colored with a different color from their neighbors, with a total of four colors:
Indeed, for this map, there is no need to label the colors in the legend, as they don’t stand for something special.
So, we choose to just have a nice title for the map by customizing our legend a bit:
- Set the legend’s visibility to “Title Only“.
- Resize it by dragging its handle.
- Move it to the top and center of the map.
- Change its styling to make it more prominent.
Check out a quick demonstration here:
The result is a fine-looking map, with only a title to get our message across!
Finally, if you want to recreate this map on your own, you can copy the below map configuration and use it on the website (or the app):
{"groups":{"#377eb8":{"div":"#box0","label":"","paths":["Canada","Russia","India","Turkmenistan","Kyrgyzstan","Madagascar","Namibia","Tanzania","South_Sudan","Syria","Algeria","Cote_d_Ivoire","Benin","Colombia","Paraguay","Uruguay","Cuba","Guatemala","Dominican_Republic","United_Kingdom","Sweden","Portugal","Switzerland","Netherlands","Slovakia","North_Macedonia","Vietnam","New_Zealand","South_Korea","Cameroon","Suriname","Nicaragua","Moldova","Montenegro","Luxembourg","Monaco","Malta","Senegal","Cyprus","Palestinian_Territories","Armenia","Singapore","Brunei","Lesotho","Saudi_Arabia","Djibouti"]},"#4daf4a":{"div":"#box1","label":"","paths":["Mexico","Argentina","Peru","Australia","Kazakhstan","Spain","Germany","Italy","Belarus","Finland","DR_Congo","Sudan","Yemen","Somalia","Niger","Mauritania","Sri_Lanka","Malaysia","Laos","North_Korea","Pakistan","Iraq","Azerbaijan","Taiwan","Liberia","Guyana","Iceland","Bosnia_and_Herzegovina","Bulgaria","Hungary","United_Arab_Emirates","Tajikistan","Bhutan","Eswatini","Zimbabwe","Malawi","Gabon","Gambia","Togo","Jamaica","El_Salvador","Albania","Israel"]},"#984ea3":{"div":"#box2","label":"","paths":["United_States","Venezuela","Bolivia","French_Guiana","Botswana","Mozambique","Angola","China","Indonesia","Thailand","Iran","Georgia","Uzbekistan","Oman","Libya","Western_Sahara","Guinea","Burkina_Faso","Nigeria","Central_African_Republic","Ethiopia","Uganda","Burundi","Greece","France","Ireland","Norway","Ukraine","Lithuania","Estonia","Czechia","Serbia","Slovenia","Bangladesh","Bahrain","Costa_Rica","Belize","Puerto_Rico","Lebanon"]},"#ff7f00":{"div":"#box3","label":"","paths":["Brazil","Greenland","Ecuador","Chile","Honduras","Panama","Haiti","Morocco","Turkey","Kosovo","Romania","Poland","Denmark","Latvia","Austria","Belgium","Andorra","Croatia","Afghanistan","Mongolia","Nepal","Myanmar","Cambodia","Philippines","Japan","Papua_New_Guinea","Egypt","Chad","Tunisia","Mali","Sierra_Leone","Guinea_Bissau","Ghana","Congo","Equatorial_Guinea","Kenya","Rwanda","Zambia","South_Africa","Jordan","Qatar","Eritrea","Kuwait","Trinidad_and_Tobago"]}},"title":"The Four-Color Theorem","hidden":[],"background":"#f0f0f0","borders":"#f0f0f0","legendFont":"Helvetica","legendFontColor":"#ffffff","legendBgColor":"#097779","usaStatesShown":false,"canadaStatesShown":false,"splitUK":false,"legendPosition":"custom","legendX":"345.71","legendY":"12.19","legendSize":"custom","legendScale":1.1142125957180318,"legendStatus":"title"}Make your own custom map easily with MapChart!