30 Day Map Challenge-Admiring the Work of Others

For the past several years November for me has meant working on the 30 Day Map Challenge. This year I’ve been too busy to participate - also I really needed a break from it. Not participating means I’ve been able to admire the work of other cartographers. Here are some highlights from the first 15 days.

Since I am no longer on Twitter most of these are from Mastodon or BlueSky but I’ve tried to post links to the author’s own sites where possible. I really like the above representation of population as peaks by Cédric Vidonne for Day 13 (use a new tool). In a mountainous country like Switzerland, the population is mainly in the flattest areas so this is almost a reverse reality. You can read more on his Github page.

This map of lighthouses in Taiwan by Chen-Chia Ku is a nice pick for Day 1 (points)

For Day 2 (lines) here is a nice hachure map of England’s Lake District by Jo Wood. Details and more maps can be found on his Obervable page.

Day 7 (vintage style) - here is a map of UFO sightings in Denmark by Kurt Menke.

Day 11’s theme was Arctic. Here is a language map of the region by Bluesky user terence.

Day 15’s theme was “my data”. Erwan Rivault mapped his change jar to show where he’s been.

Here is a cool antipodes map/video for Day 14 (World Map) from Steve Faeembra.

Finally - the Day 9 prompt was to make a map using AI. I’m kind of fascinated with these two examples. User Tomasral asked ChatGPT for a map of the railway lines of Asturias in Spain. The result includes a bunch of alternate spellings of “narrow gauge” as well as the cities of Oviedo, Aviles and the Bay of Biscay.

Aquila Flower had a similar result with ChatGPT making a pictorial map of the Salish Sea in British Columbia and Washington State.