Official repo for the #30DayMapChallenge data visualization project. Open to everyone!
Daily social mapping project happening every November
| Date | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 01-11-2024 | Points | 30DayMapChallenge classic: A map with points. Start the challenge with points. Show individual locations—anything from cities to trees or more abstract concepts. Simple, but a key part of the challenge. 📍 |
| 02-11-2024 | Lines | 30DayMapChallenge classic: A map with focus on lines. Roads, rivers, routes, or borders—this day is all about mapping connections and divisions. Another traditional way to keep things moving. 📏 |
| 03-11-2024 | Polygons | 30DayMapChallenge classic: A map with polygons. Regions, countries, lakes—this day is for defined shapes that fill space. 🛑 |
| 04-11-2024 | Hexagons | Maps using hexagonal grids. Step away from square grids and try mapping with hexagons. A fun way to show density or spatial patterns. 🔷 |
| 05-11-2024 | A journey | Map any journey. Personal or not. Trace a journey—this could be a daily commute, a long-distance trip, or something from history. The key is to map movement from one place to another. 🚶♂️✈️ |
| 06-11-2024 | Raster | A map using raster data. Rasters are everywhere, but today’s focus is purely on grids and pixels—satellite imagery, heatmaps, or any continuous surface data. 🟦🟧 |
| 07-11-2024 | Vintage style | Map something modern in a vintage aesthetic. Create a map that captures the look and feel of historical cartography but focuses on a contemporary topic. Use muted colors, fonts, and classic elements. 🕰️🗺️ |
| 08-11-2024 | Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) | Use data from HDX to map humanitarian topics. Explore the datasets from the Humanitarian Data Exchange, covering disaster response, health, population, and development. Map for social good. 🌍🚑 |
| 09-11-2024 | AI only | This day is all about prompt engineering. Use AI tools like DALL-E, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, or ChatGPT with geospatial capabilities to create a map based on AI-generated content. The challenge is to get the right prompt and critically assess the output—how well does AI capture or distort the map’s intent? |
| 10-11-2024 | Pen & paper | Draw a map by hand. Go analog and draw a map using pen and paper. The result doesn’t have to be perfect—it’s about the creative process. ✏️🗺️ |
| 11-11-2024 | Arctic | Map the Arctic. Whether it’s ice coverage, wildlife habitats, or the effects of climate change, this day is all about mapping the cold extremes of the Arctic. ❄️🧊 |
| 12-11-2024 | Time and space | Map something where time matters. Visualize change over time—urban growth, migration, or environmental shifts. Show the relationship between time and geography. ⏳🌍 |
| 13-11-2024 | A new tool | Use a tool you’ve never tried before. The challenge has always been about trying new things. Use a tool, software, or drawing technique you’ve never worked with before. 🧪🔧 |
| 14-11-2024 | A world map | Map the whole world. Whether it’s continents, ecosystems, or oceans, this is the day to map the entire planet. 🌍 |
| 15-11-2024 | My data | Map something personal. Map data from your own life—this could be places you’ve traveled, your daily routine, or any other personal touch. 🗒️ |
| 16-11-2024 | Choropleth | Classic choropleth map. Use color to show data variation across regions. This simple but effective technique is a staple for showing thematic differences. 🎨 |
| 17-11-2024 | Collaborative map | Collaborate with others on a single map. For today’s challenge, team up! Whether you work with one person or several, the idea is to combine your efforts on a single map. 🤝🗺️ |
| 18-11-2024 | 3D | Map with depth. Add a third dimension to your map. Whether it’s visualizing elevation, buildings, or something more abstract, today’s about thinking beyond flat surfaces. 🎢🏔️ |
| 19-11-2024 | Typography | Map focused on typography. Let text and words do the heavy lifting today. Whether you’re focusing on place names, labeling, or using text to create shapes and patterns. ✍️🅰️ |
| 20-11-2024 | OpenStreetMap | Use OpenStreetMap data to create something. OpenStreetMap offers rich, editable data from roads to buildings and beyond. The goal is to showcase the power of this community-driven dataset. 🗺️📍 |
| 21-11-2024 | Conflict | Map a conflict. Political, territorial, or social—there are conflicts all around us. Map boundaries, tension points, or the outcomes of conflicts. ⚔️🛑 |
| 22-11-2024 | 2 colours | Create a map using only 2 colors. No gradients or shading—just two flat colors. This restriction encourages creativity in design and forces you to think about how to clearly convey your message with minimal color. |
| 23-11-2024 | Memory | Map based on memory. Create a map of a place you remember—hometown, favorite destination, or somewhere meaningful. It doesn’t need to be perfectly accurate, just how you recall it. 💭🗺️ |
| 24-11-2024 | Only circular shapes | Map using only circles. Everything should be circular. Forget straight lines and sharp edges, and see how creative you can get by sticking to round shapes. 🔵⭕ |
| 25-11-2024 | Heat | Map something related to heat. Focus on heat, whether it’s actual temperature or areas of intensity—like heatmaps of activity or metaphorical heat. 🔥🌡️ |
| 26-11-2024 | Map projections | Explore different map projections and how they distort the world. Whether it’s focusing on the classic Mercator, the Peters projection, or a more obscure one like the Waterman Butterfly, today is about playing with how we represent the round Earth on flat surfaces. |
| 27-11-2024 | Micromapping | Map something small and precise. Zoom in and map a small area in high detail. It could be a single building, a street corner, or a tiny plot of land. Focus on accuracy at a small scale. 🧐🔍 |
| 28-11-2024 | The blue planet | Map oceans, rivers, and lakes. Focus on water today. Map the oceans, rivers, or lakes, diving deep into marine environments or water systems. 🌊🐋 |
| 29-11-2024 | Overture | Use data from the Overture Maps Foundation. Explore data from Overture Maps Foundation to create a map that highlights new geographic datasets. A great opportunity to dive into open geospatial data! 🌍📊 |
| 30-11-2024 | The final map | The final challenge—your choice! Revisit a technique from earlier in the month, refine an idea, or try something completely new. End the challenge on a high note with a map that showcases your creativity, growth, or just pure fun! 🎉🌐 |
The idea is to create maps based around different themes each day of November using the hashtag #30DayMapChallenge. You can prepare the maps beforehand, but the main idea is to publish maps on the dedicated days. Just include a picture of the map when you post to X/Instagram/Linkedin (or your preferred social media platforms) using the hashtag. You don’t have to sign up anywhere to participate. There are no restrictions on the tools, technologies or the data you use in your maps. Doing less than 30 is also fine. See the Code of Conduct at the bottom of the page.
Data 🗺
You can use what ever data you want. But here are a few sources which could help you to get started or give you new ideas 👇
- OpenStreetMap
- OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. If you seek for easy ways to get an extract of the data, you can check for GeoFabrik for Shapefiles or Overpass API for GeoJSONs etc..
- Overture Maps Foundation
- OMF publishes global data extracts monthly which are a combination of OpenStreetMap and other open data sources.
- Natural Earth Data
- Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
- Free GIS Data
- The site contains a categorised list of links to over 500 sites providing freely available geographic datasets - all ready for loading into a Geographic Information System.
- OS OpenData
- Ordnance Survey Open Data for Great Britain. Includes general topographic map data at a range of scales; useful thematic data such as greenspace, terrain, roads and rivers; postcode and place name georeferencing.
- Humanitarian Data Exchange
- Interesting datasets from around the world.
- LINZ Data Service
- New Zealand land and sea data available for free under a Creative Commons licence via download or OGC APIs.
- LINZ NZ Aerial Basemap
- Current aerial imagery for New Zealand available under a Creative Commons licence via WMTS or XYZ tile services.
- Open Topography
- Lidar point cloud and DEM data.
- A collective list of free APIs for use in software and web development.
- GIS data repositories spreadsheet by Karen Payne
- Data is Plural
- The best data newsletter out there with an awesome archive including also some very obscure datasets.
Tools 🔨🔧
The challenge is open to any software, but here’s a list of popular open-source tools to consider. No programming skills are required. Or if you are a programmer, no design skills are required.
- QGIS
- A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System. A desktop software that allows you to read/write multiple data formats and output (mainly static) maps.
- Kepler
- Open source geospatial analysis tool for large-scale data sets and for interactive maps.
- Aerialod
- Not really a GIS tool, but can be used to create some stunning 3D visualizations
- Blender
- Free and open source 3D creation suite. Check out the BlenderGIS extension.
- R packages for geospatial
- Python packages for geospatial
- geopandas, xarray-spatial, matplotlib, geoplot, hvplot and plotly to mention a few.
- Mapshaper
- Useful for geospatial data processing in the browser such as file format conversion, map projection, feature simplification, filtering, clipping, merging etc. Can also be run locally from the command line.
- Vega-Lite
- Declarative visualization specification including cartographic output. Specifications can be written directly in JSON or via program language interfaces such as altair (Python) and elm-vegalite (Elm). See, for example, this tutorial on using OpenStreetMap with elm-vegalite
- Vega
- More flexible but lower-level declarative visualization specification including cartographic output. Specifications can be written directly in JSON or via program language interfaces such elm-vega.
- Litvis
- Literate Visualization notebook environment optimised for specifying visualizations and documenting the design process. While not specific to cartography, can be a useful environment for exploring cartographic design.
- Observable
- Reactive notebook environment for generation of visualization and cartographic output embedded in a textual narrative. Focus is on using d3 for specifying visual output.
Tutorials & Helpful Resources 📚
If you want to make maps with QGIS, this video is a great starting point. Check out also other videos by Klas Karlson
- Steven Bernard’s QGIS Introduction
- QGIS Tutorials by Ujaval Gandhi
- 3D Landscape Tutorial by Alasdair Rae
- Basics of Mapmaking by Kenneth Field
Maps & Stats
Every year the challenge gathers thousands of mappers around the globe. As the challenge has spread across various platforms, gathering statistics has proven to be nearly impossible. Challenge has been happenning since 2019 and the total number of maps created is more than 50,000.
In 2021 there were more than 1200 mappers and more than 9000 maps created for the challenge. In 2020 more than 1000 people posted more than 7000 maps for the challenge on different platforms. If you want to see some maps from past challenges, browse the hashtag on X or check the official website of the challenge and browse different years.
#30DayMapChallenge bot by Haifeng Niu harvested comprehensive stats and maps from the challenge
In 2020 & 2019 David Friggens did a huge lift on the 30DayMapChallenge2020Metadata repository with metadata & interactive gallery.
Code of Conduct
No matter if you are a GIS expert or never made a map before this challenge, everyone is welcome to participate,
But keep in mind a few things:
- All maps you publish have to be your original work. Don’t steal content from others.
- Give credit to the original data source whenever possible.
- The challenge is all about creativity, openness and the joy of beautiful maps and cartography. It is not a competition,
- Be mindful in how you use AI tooling. If you generate all of your maps with generative AI tools, where’s the fun? This is not a prompt engineering challenge.
- Don’t be an asshole. Don’t harass or steal from others.
Inspiration for the challenge came from Inktober and Tidy Tuesday.
Merchandise
Get your official #30DayMapChallenge stickers from Redbubble.
