#30DayMapChallenge with Gispo
It’s the last day of November and so #30DaymapChallenge comes to its end. The last day of the challenge is Metamapping day and for that theme we take a look at the maps we created here in Gispo.
This year we participated as a group with each one of us contributing one or more maps. The challenge has been fun and interesting, but most of all a chance to learn by doing and a chance to learn by seeing the maps others have been sharing. This years’ maps have been inspiring and wonderful – thanks to all of you who participated!
We created and shared 29 maps in total, but what were the statistics behind the maps? For 29 maps we used 29 different databases in total. Most commonly used databases were Natural Earth (9), Maanmittauslaitos – National land survey of Finland (5) and OpenStreetmap (4). Our favourite program for making maps was QGIS. In total 20 maps were made with QGIS, out of which 8 were made using only QGIS and no additional programs or plugins. Other tools included Python (4), PostGIS (3) and various plugins such as qgis2web, pensilicish QML style, and geogrid. And even though the maps might look simple on the surface, we used 4 hours on average per map. That includes coming up with the idea, searching for the right datasets and tools, coding, scraping, working out the composition, trial, error, starting again… and finally exporting the map.
But now, here are the maps! From the three most liked maps we also have comments from their respective creators.
Topi:
“I’ve been blown away by the submissions to 30DayMapChallenge also this year. The quality of the maps has taken a leap forward and it’s great to see also new mapmakers and organizations to take part. If you are interested, you can see a collection of the most successful maps here.
For my own Twitter account I made around 20 maps and for the Gispo account I did a few. The monochrome map with the ships was a quick draft with the fascinating World Bank shipping dataset and for the first day with points I reused an old design of mine with population data.”
Salla:
“Map without computer” was by far the funniest theme in my opinion and I hurried to book it for myself right away. I first made one version by hand and with watercolors, but it was boring. Wet felting as a technique is pretty hard to master, so I didn’t plan to make any very detailed map. The altitude ranges seemed to be sufficiently concise. I had many different colored wools already in the closet, but I ended up with the typical green-brown scale. The finished Finland was very strangely shaped and fluffy at the edges, so I cut the borders neater with scissors.
Eemil:
Making maps is always great fun, but this map was peculiar in a sense that I thought about the subject for the map much more than the making of it. As a theme map choropleth map is very common so I started thinking is there something that hasn’t been “choropleth mapped” before. While I was searching for data Wikipedia popped into my mind: data is information, and if people need information, Wikipedia is usually the first place where they go. The same applies with maps. I haven’t participated in 30DayMapChallenge before, but it was really cool to see the maps others made. I was surprised how much there was to see for every day of the challenge!
