@jmabbott All the shadows.

Spiral staircases are notoriously difficult to draw because the shading is quite difficult to get right. I do remember spending absolutely ages getting this one to look right in GIMP (didn't have Affinity back then), and the image still doesn't seem to be working to perfection. However, since I spent all that time doing it and it kind of half way gets there I thought I would show you how I went about it. Maybe you will do yours differently and manage to hit the right mix.

These are the various bits and pieces layer by layer. You might not need them all, or you might need some of your own instead of some of these, but this is what mine is made up with. And you might need to soften or harden some of the lines if you do it the same way. You might not need the cap shadow, or you might... I think you get what I'm saying. Every spiral staircase is its own thing.

I was going to annotate each one, but I can't seem to separate them now I've pasted them. If you have any questions just ask.

This work was from Beaumaris Castle. I didn't have Affinity back then, so every last bit of this staircase was worked in pixels rather than conveniently drawn as a nice editable polygon with a bit of gradient shading. So don't let the fact that this took me a while put you off. It probably wouldn't have taken more than a week of short work sessions to draw in Affinity Designer.

It's coming on really well, though I think you may have misunderstood me when I suggested the paper texture in the symbols. The idea was to multiply the texture over the top of the entire symbol so that the paper texture is effectively mixed with the colours of the symbol rather than just a background, so that in the editor you are using to create your symbols you get this:

• Paper texture layer, set to multiply mode
• All the layers the symbol is drawn on

For the frames, maybe just a simple line at zero width around each one, and a blend mode that is set to overlay with opacity reduced to such an extent as to make them nearly invisible. Be careful, also to leave at least a small space all the way around the inside of each frame so that the text doesn't touch the sides. Probably better to reduce the size of the text a bit so the symbols don't start to look small and lost.

:) I am hoping that someone will make a map of the world one day in which all the country names are replaced with the most common form of greeting.

Ok, I think Remy and I posted at the same time. Remy certainly points out something I hadn't thought about being the problem at all, but which is probably your main issue here.

If you have deleted the CC3 symbols from the map they will still be in the Symbol Manager. The easiest thing to do is to Purge, save the map, close it, and reopen it. You should be rid of all the old symbol references then, and free to place the new trees.

(Purge is a button in the Symbol Manager)

I'm not sure if that setting will 'stick' between different sessions, even on the same map. I don't use it that often myself because it can cause other things to happen that were the historical reason the symbols were drawn twice in the first place. That's what normally happens when DELAYDRAWSYM is set to the default 1 - the symbols are drawn twice.

I love the map, but I'm a bit confused about the issue you describe with the symbols you made.

If they are bitmap symbols, and if it is that they don't look like they are draw on the paper background you could try importing the paper background into whatever app you are using to create the symbols, and multiplying it over the symbol at an appropriate opacity. That should imprint each symbol with the same kind of texture as the rest of the map.