Legend Generator Tool released by AZGS Data Science team

The AZGS Data Science group has added a new feature on our Web Tools platform: the Legend Generator. The Legend Generator turns information from an Excel spreadsheet into a vectorized legend image. The tool currently accepts spreadsheets formatted for the "Description of Map Units" table from the U.S. Geological Survey's Geologic Map Schema (GeMS), but it may support other formats in the future.

The tool reads each unit's hierarchy, color, label, and age, and arranges this information into a properly ordered legend. There are multiple customizable features that users can tweak prior to export, including text size, box size, color, and font. The tool defaults to a font designed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) called GeoAge; which includes many special geologic age symbols commonly used in U.S. geologic mapping. The default settings have several other useful aesthetic features: labels longer than a few characters are reduced in size automatically; label colors switch to white-over-dark fills when needed for readability; and the color and size of any individual unit can be adjusted in a live preview before exporting.

Once exported, the vectorized legend is fully customizable in Adobe Illustrator. All elements are individually editable, and text is converted to outlines, meaning that the file will open in Illustrator without missing or substituted fonts. The result is a clean, functional legend that can either be used in a map layout as is, or refined further as needed. The tool was developed using Claude AI through a conversational, iterative process.