Amazon has made available a new set of graphics in Visio, and other formats. These stencils are an excellent resource for architects and engineers who need to document cloud environments.

The symbols can be found here: https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/

All the major file formats are available including: EPS, PNG, SVG, Visio, and PowerPoint. Interestingly, there are two sets of PowerPoint shapes. One supports light backgrounds. The other supports dark backgrounds. I’ve included an example of what each looks like for comparison.

The Visio stencils are easy to deploy, simply download the zip file and copy the contents into the “My Shapes” folder on your PC. This version includes 25 separate Visio compatible files. The files each cover a different feature set. Examples include “Compute,” “Blockchain,” “Database,” and “Machine Learning.“

The shapes themselves are well done and should look good in any presentation or document. My only critique is a minor one. I wish the images for the newer services conveyed more meaning. That’s not a criticism of the Visio shapes, but of the images themselves. The VMware Cloud on AWS image is unique, but it doesn’t strongly reflect a connection to VMware. Similarly, the AWS Outpost icon does not appear to show that it is an on-premises option.

In all, I’m happy that Amazon produces high quality images for use by customers. While there are some really nice third party options, It’s best coming directly from the company to ensure that nothing is misrepresented.