resources
Discount Links – Strava Premium, Route Sketcher, GPS Artify
Design Tools
Over the years, I’ve had countless people ask how I design my GPS art — and it’s never been a simple answer. My process has evolved through years of innovation, research, talking with other GPS Artists, creative experimentation, finding my own ways to make precision GPS art.
More recently, I’ve been consulting with two talented software engineers from Europe to develop two powerful online design tools—mainly focusing on the freestyle side of their tools—that now make the process much easier for everyone.
Route Sketcher is a brand-new, evolving platform that introduces exciting features like AI-assisted design, cloning, and a public gallery to share and explore ideas. GPS Artify is a more robust, user friendly, and reliable design tool — great for straightforward GPS art creation and ideal for beginners.
Both design tools include powerful freestyle modes, which I highly recommend. This mode lets you upload images and helps you to replicate them or you can even just draw your own designs freehand. You can then place, resize, and rotate your artwork anywhere on Earth — from parks to beaches to open fields — and export it as a GPX file ready to follow on your GPS device. Route Sketcher even lets you clone designs like my popular ‘Sole Searching’ one, drop it into your local open space, save to your GPS device and then recreate it on foot as closely as you can. Both tools work well on mobile devices by simply drawing with your finger on the screen.
You can try both design tools for street routing too, but results depend heavily on the image, road density, design length, and how much editing you’re willing to do. I mainly endorse freestyle modes now, as street routing remains complex and often pushes most tools—without a dense network and long route, strong results are hard to achieve.
If you want to try designing GPS Art I recommend using Freestyle Mode on both these design tools. Start with a relatively simple design, find the biggest accessible open space in your region, drop, resize, rotate the image to best fit your space, bigger is better(1.5km to 3km, or 1 to 2 miles for basic outline designs), save the GPX file to your device and get moving.
If you want all the design tool features use my discount links or codes below. Enjoy
Route Sketcher (or use code GURU)
GPS Artify (or use code guru20)
My GPS Setup – Coros
I’ve tested a lot of different watches through ultra running and for GPS art, and I’ve seen what my friends use out on the run. Coros has consistently given me the most reliable tracks.
Every current Coros watch has multiband GPS, and that accuracy really shows — especially when you’re drawing detailed shapes or running in tricky signal areas. Most other brands don’t offer multiband across their full line-up.
They’re also the best value for money in my experience. The battery life is huge, the accuracy is top-tier, and you’re not paying premium prices to get it.
Plus, their customer service has been excellent whenever I’ve needed help. And the free firmware upgrades mean your watch keeps gaining new features and improvements without having to buy a new one.
Put all that together — accuracy, battery life, price, support, and ongoing free upgrades — and Coros is the one I trust for the work I do.
Free accessory with any Coros watch (use code GPSARTGURU)
My GPS Art Favourites
[This section is currently under development – more to come]
Gustavo Lyra is probably my favourite GPS Artist and helped me a lot in my early freestyle learning days. He continues to be an inspiration to me and many others in that style. He’s been doing it for a long time mainly on his local sand dunes in Brazil. He often does activities in the 6 to 8hr range often on heavy sloping sand. The intricacy and detail is incredible. When I first stumbled on his work before I was even doing GPS art I didn’t understand his work or how it could be achieved, I do now and appreciate it so much. He normally brings in his own interests, personality or culture into his work. I am honoured to have learn from the best and gotten to know this gentleman. You can find Gustavo on Instagram and Strava
My favourite piece of his based off Alexander Milovs sculpture – Love. It took Gustavo approximately 6hrs/30km.
How to do Freestyle GPS Art
[This section is currently under development – more to come]
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