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Oct 21, 2026

How to hack shadow and glow into ArcGIS Pro text and labels

By John Nelson

One of the many beguiling traits of ArcGIS Pro is that it treats text geometry like any other polygon. All those amazing symbol layers and symbol layer effects can be brought to bear upon unsuspecting fonts. Say, this means we can hack a drop shadow or glow effect into text by giving it a gradient stroke. What’s more, because we have exquisite control over the design of the gradient we’ve actually got a lot more horsepower behind our styling than a conventional drop shadow or glow feature.

Please consider investing 1.5 minutes of your time learning how to imbue text and labels with glorious gradient shading…

It’s that simple! And immensely flexible. Your text is going to just JUMP off that map.

Happy shading! Love, John

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John Nelson

I have far too much fun looking for ways to understand and present data visually, hopefully driving product strategy and engaging users. I work in the ArcGIS Living Atlas team at Esri, pushing and pulling data in all sorts of absurd ways and then sharing the process. I also design user experiences for maps and apps. When I'm not doing those things, I'm chasing around toddlers and wrangling chickens, and generally getting into other ad-hoc adventures. Life is good. You might also like these Styles for ArcGIS Pro: esriurl.com/nelsonstyles

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