In map design, a cartographer is not only thinking about the symbol of geographic feature but also its attributes. The descriptive text for features can vary in graphic characteristics in order to emphasize the differences, hierarchy, and importance of the features. The overall appearance and message of the map can be significantly affected by text characteristics, such as fonts, style (for example, italic, bold, and so on), character spacing, leading (space between lines in a block text), callouts and halos, fields used for labeling size, color, shape, position relative to the features, or display scale of the text. You can add descriptive text to your map using dynamic labels, annotations, and graphic text.

The dynamic labels are based on attribute values and are stored as a property of a layer in a map document, as a part of a map layer (.lyr), layer package (.lpk), or map package (.mpk). The dynamic labels are created using the Standard Label Engine or the Maplex Label Engine...