I ❤️ San Francisco

Today I ran a 33 km heart-shaped route around San Francisco to demonstrate my love for the city¹.

If you are interested in creating your own GPS art - or you just want to make your daily walk, jog or bike ride a little more fun - you can now use Routista to help you plan a pictorial route.

Have you ever seen a bike ride that traces a heart, a star, or even a dinosaur on a map? That’s GPS art - and with Routista, creating your own is easier than you might think. Routista turns shapes into real-world routes you can follow on your bike ride, jog, or walk. 

Turn Shapes into Routes

The idea behind Routista is simple: you provide a shape, and Routista finds the best way to recreate it using actual roads and paths.

You can either upload an image or draw your own shape directly. Once you’ve chosen your design, select the area where you want to create your route. Routista then generates a GPS route that matches your shape as closely as possible, using the available streets and trails.

This works anywhere, whether you’re exploring your local neighborhood or planning something special in a new city.

Export and Ride

Once your route is ready, you can export it as a GPX file. This makes it compatible with most fitness apps and GPS devices, so you can load it onto your phone, smartwatch, or bike computer and follow it just like any other planned route.

Strava Art

Fans of creative route-making can explore a wide range of impressive examples on stravart, a website dedicated to curating the best works of art created by the joggers, cyclists, and hikers of Strava. It’s a great way to share your work, discover inspiration from others, and become part of a growing community of GPS artists.

 

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1. Of course I didn’t. I don’t live in San Francisco, and I’m not mad. ↩