Make Your Proxi Map Look Like You: A Guide to Custom Icons

Custom icons are one of the easiest ways to make your map feel on-brand, polished, and uniquely yours.

If you have ever looked at a Proxi map and thought, "I wish those pins looked a little more like us," good news: they can. Custom icons are one of Proxi's most loved features, and once you know how to use them, you will wonder how you ever mapped without them.

Whether you are building a map for your organization, showcasing local businesses, or activating a sponsor partnership, custom icons give your map a level of polish and personality that generic pins simply cannot match. Let's walk through what they are, why they matter, and exactly how to set them up.

Why Custom Icons Are Worth Your Time

A map is a visual experience. Every element on it, including the icons marking each location, communicates something to the person exploring it. Default pins work fine, but custom icons do so much more.

Here are three ways Proxi users are putting them to work:

Brand your map. If your organization has a logo, a color palette, or visual identity guidelines, your map should reflect that. Custom icons let you carry your brand all the way down to the individual pin level, creating a cohesive experience that feels intentional and professional.

Highlight a sponsor. Have a sponsor supporting your map or campaign? Give them visibility right on the map itself by using their logo or brand colors as the icon. It is a creative and valuable way to deliver sponsor recognition beyond a simple logo placement.

Differentiate business types. If your map includes multiple categories of locations, like restaurants, shops, hotels, and attractions, custom icons let visitors immediately understand what they are looking at before they even click. A little visual differentiation goes a long way for user experience.

How to Create Your Custom Icons

Before you upload anything to Proxi, you need to create your icons. The good news is you do not need a graphic designer or fancy software. Canva is one of the most popular tools our users reach for, and it works beautifully for this.

The most important thing to know upfront: your icon should always be in a circular shape with a transparent background. This is what ensures it displays correctly on your map without any formatting quirks.

Jessica Cummings, Sports Sales Coordinator at Visit Charlotte (a division of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority), has created custom icons for several Visit Charlotte maps in Proxi. Here is her step-by-step process in her own words:

"To create the custom icons, I used Canva Pro. First, I started a new project with a solid circle placed on a white square background. You can choose any color for the circle, depending on your company's color palette or the theme of your map.

Next, I uploaded a hotel logo with a transparent background and placed it on top of the circle. Then I exported the project as a PNG. After downloading it, I re-uploaded the file into Canva Pro so I could remove the white square background with Canva's background remover feature. Once you're left with a circle featuring your logo or icon with a fully transparent background, the icon is ready to upload into your Proxi Map!

When uploading a custom icon to your map, it's important that the icon is always in a circular shape. Uploading only a hotel logo or icon without the circle background will result in formatting issues."

Jessica's workflow is a great template to follow regardless of what logos or icons you are working with. The key steps are: start with a circle, layer your logo or icon on top, export as a PNG, and remove the background before uploading.

Two Ways to Upload Custom Icons in Proxi

Once your icon is ready, you have two options for how to apply it in Proxi, depending on how broadly or specifically you want it to appear.

Option 1: Apply a custom icon to an entire category.

If you want every point within a category to share the same icon, this is your path. Navigate to Categories and Tags in your map settings, click the category you want to update, then click Custom Icon. From there you can upload your file and it will apply across every point in that category automatically. This is ideal for branded maps, sponsor callouts, or any situation where consistency across a group of locations matters.

Option 2: Apply a custom icon to a single point.

If you want to customize icons on a more individual, one-off basis, you can do that too. After adding a point to your map, click on it, then click Edit, and then click Custom Icon to upload your file. This gives you granular control if different locations need different visual treatment, without having to apply a category-wide change.

Both options are straightforward and take just a few minutes once your icon file is ready.

Tips for Getting the Best Results

A few things to keep in mind as you create and upload your icons:

Always use a transparent background. A white or colored background behind your icon will look out of place on the map. Canva Pro's background remover makes this easy, as Jessica noted, but other tools like Adobe Express or Remove.bg work well too.

Stick to circular shapes. Proxi is designed to display circular icons cleanly. Irregular shapes can create unexpected formatting results, so when in doubt, keep it round.

Keep it simple. Icons appear small on the map, so busy or detailed designs can lose their impact. A clean logo or simple graphic on a solid-colored circle tends to read best.

Match your brand colors. If you are building a map for an organization, use the circle color as an opportunity to reinforce your palette. A small touch like this makes the whole map feel more cohesive.

Ready to Give Your Map a Custom Look?

Custom icons are a small detail that makes a big impression. Whether you are building a visitor guide, a business directory, a scavenger hunt, or a sponsor-supported campaign map, the ability to brand every pin on your map is a feature that sets Proxi apart.