The automatic placement of text or symbol labels corresponding to graphical objects is critical in several application areas such as Cartography, Geographical Information Systems, and Graph Drawing. In this paper we present a general framework for solving the problem of assigning text or symbol labels to a set of graphical features in two dimensional drawings or maps. Our approach does not favor the labeling of one type of graphical feature (such as a node, edge, or area) over another. Additionally, the labcls arc allowed to have arbitrary size and orientation. We have applied our framework to drawings of graphs. We have implemented our techniques and have performed extensive experimentation on hierarchical and orthogonal drawings of graphs. The resulting label assignments are very practical and indicate the effectiveness of our approach.