Checking In On The #30DayMapChallenge
November, Also Known As World Cartography Month
For most people in the northern hemisphere, November is a time for leaf peeping, wearing sweats, and planning holiday feasts. But for some others, November means one thing and one thing only:
The 30DayMapChallenge.
Those people would be cartographers, mostly, who anticipate the now-annual challenge throughout the year. The 30 Day Map Challenge was started on social media in 2019 by Finland-based cartographer Topi Tjukanov and renewed strong again in this, its fifth year in existence.
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 Twitter (or other platforms) with 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.
You can follow along with the challenge on your favorite social media sites by browsing the hashtag #30daymapchallenge.
Normally just a spectator in the challenge, last week I was inspired to participate in day nine. The theme that day was hexagons.
I’ve been playing a lot of Settlers of Catan since summer (thanks Sean!), so I prompted the latest release of ChatGPT — which includes the powerful image generator DALL·E 3 — to generate a Catan-themed hexagon map. It’s a pleasant-looking graphic that took the application less than a minute to generate.
Asking DALL·E 3 to generate maps is something worth exploring more of going forward, if for no other reason than interest alone. So I continued the exploration with the application, this time taking a different game-related turn:
let's create a custom banner that is 1584 pixels wide x 396 pixels tall. the image should be map-themed and made in a retro look, like a nintendo video game map
Given that prompt, here are four maps it came up with:
If you are experimenting with generative AI in map-related or other fun ways, feel free to share in the comments below.