# Making an architectural print with the Figure Ground Map preset > the classic black-and-white building-mass study Figure-ground is the classic architecture-school drawing: every building footprint in solid black on white, nothing else but whisper-gray water and parks. This preset reproduces it straight from OSM building data, and the stark two-tone artwork is the most forgiving design in the whole set: it prints, engraves, and 3D prints beautifully because the contrast is absolute. Make a minimalist wall panel, a desk plaque, or an architect's gift. ## What you need - **UV printing:** flatbed UV printer, white or clear [acrylic](https://yxecreations.com/pages/acrylic-sheets), brushed aluminum, or maple plywood panels - **Sublimation:** sublimation printer + paper, white poly-coated aluminum panel or hardboard, heat press, heat tape, butcher paper - **Laser engraving:** CO2 or diode laser, light [laser-grade plywood](https://yxecreations.com/collections/laser-grade-plywood) (maple/birch) or white-core two-tone acrylic; the black-on-white design maps 1:1 to engraved-on-raw - **3D printing:** any dual-color-capable printer; black + white filament is genuinely all you need ## 1. Start from the preset Open [the Figure-Ground Map preset](/map-designer?preset=figure-ground-map). It loads Manhattan at zoom 14.2: the neighborhood scale where individual building footprints read as texture but blocks still form patterns. That zoom is the sweet spot for this style: zoom out past ~13.5 and buildings shrink to pepper, zoom in past ~15 and you get a dozen big blobs. Search any city with good OSM building coverage (most of North America, Europe, Japan) and frame a district with personality: a street grid colliding with a diagonal avenue, a riverfront, a medieval core. Water along one edge gives the composition breathing room. ## 2. Tune the layers One Solid layer group, **Buildings**: only four features, and that restraint is the style: - **Land**: `#FFFFFF` pure white ground. - **Water**: `#E3E3E1` whisper gray. Deliberately subtle; darken to `#CFCFCC` if you want the shoreline to assert itself in print. - **Parks**: `#DCE6D8` faint sage, just enough to explain the building-free voids like Central Park. - **All Buildings**: `#111111`, the entire show. No road features at all: streets appear as negative white space between footprints, which is the figure-ground trick. Don't add roads; if a district looks empty, it's an OSM building-data gap, so pan to better-mapped blocks instead. ## 3. Export - **UV / sublimation:** 4096 px PNG. On a white substrate, toggle **Background off** so the blank itself is the white ground: less ink, cleaner whites. - **Laser:** combined SVG; the buildings are the only meaningful engrave geometry. - **3D:** 3MF for a two-tone stacked plaque. - Enable **small-polygon cleanup**: city-scale building data is full of sheds and slivers that turn into specks at print size. - **Corner holes** suit this design's gallery look for standoff wall mounting on [anodized standoff spacers](https://yxecreations.com/products/4-pack-anodized-standoff-spacers); add the **compass icon** overlay if the composition has a quiet corner for it. ## UV & Sublimation Printing ### UV printing 1. Export the PNG with Background off (for white substrates) or on (for clear acrylic with a white underbase). 2. In the RIP, size to your panel; this design holds up from 100 mm desk plaques to 600 mm statement pieces. 3. On brushed aluminum, print the buildings with no underbase so the metal becomes the "white": an instant architectural finish. 4. Clean the substrate, register against the jig, print. ### Sublimation 1. Print **mirrored** at final size. Note that the `#E3E3E1` water and `#DCE6D8` park tints are right at the edge of what sublimation can hold: they may wash to invisible. Either accept pure black-on-white (it looks great) or darken water to `#C8C8C5` before exporting. 2. Tape face-down to a white poly-coated panel. 3. Press with the settings recommended for your material, paper, and inks, with butcher paper above and below. 4. Peel hot; the solid black fields transfer densely and crisply. ## Laser Cutting & Engraving ### Laser engraving This is the single best laser-engraving preset in the set: the artwork is already "engrave the dark parts." 1. Import the combined SVG into [LightBurn](https://lightburnsoftware.com/MyLaserTools) at panel size; set **All Buildings** fills to raster engrave. 2. The water/park tints will engrave so faintly they're optional: delete them or leave them for a ghost of context. 3. On maple ply, one raster pass at medium power gives crisp dark footprints on pale wood; on white-core acrylic, engrave through the cap layer. 4. Cut the square outline last; add corner holes from the export modal if you mounted-hole the file before export. ## 3D Printing ### 3D printing 1. Export the 3MF: effectively a two-filament print: white base, black raised buildings (water/park tints are optional thin accents; consider hiding them in the export toggles for a pure two-tone plaque). 2. Slice with white for the base and black for the building layer; 0.12 mm layers make the tiny footprints crisp. 3. Enable small-polygon cleanup at export or the slicer will fight one-perimeter shed footprints. 4. A 150 to 200 mm square at 4 to 6 mm total thickness makes a sharp desk or wall plaque. ## Make it yours - Cities with dramatic block patterns: Barcelona's Eixample chamfered grid, Savannah's squares, Venice (water does the figure-ground for you), Tokyo's fine grain. - Invert it: land `#111111`, buildings `#FFFFFF`; the negative version UV-prints beautifully on black acrylic with Background off. - School-colors version: keep white ground, set **All Buildings** to your team hex; that's exactly how the Campus Map preset works at closer zoom. - Warm gallery take: land `#F7F2E8`, buildings `#2B2B28` for a softer archival-print feel on wood. - Switch export shape to **circle** for a porthole figure-ground; Manhattan's tip in a circle is iconic. - Add a **route layer** in red `#E63946`: one thin line through the black texture marks "our street" without breaking the style. - Print a 3-panel triptych of the same city at zoom 13 / 14.2 / 15.5 to show the grain coarsening. - Heart export shape + **Hanger hole** turns your old neighborhood into an anniversary ornament. --- Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/figure-ground-map Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/figure-ground-map