Winston Churchill… the man, the myth, the cigars… Today is officially Winston Churchill Day.
Here is a story map of his life to celebrate. Single prompt. If I were to revise, I would remove the lines, but alas, I’m excited about other maps more than this one, so I’m moving on.
Original Web Mapper GPT Prompt
# Intent
Create a biographical, interactive map about Winston Churchill for Winston Churchill Day. The map component should look early twentieth-century antique (font selection, yellowish textured paper vibe, and muted, matte color print style).
The goal will be to walk through Winston Churchill’s life, both the highs and lows, beginning with his birth, boarding school life, and then political and military adventures, and culminating with his death.
We don’t need all of the details, just the biggest highlights as found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill and/or in his autobiography.
Please include at least 15-25 highlights / major moments from his life and career.
# Audience
Random internet people interested in Winston Churchill, cartographers interested in prompt cartography, and people that see the link when it’s shared in a post on LinkedIn.
# Map Style
The maps should be tileset based – Web Mercator is fine. Please find an open and free to use tileset that looks antiquarian or World War II map style. (I don’t care if it’s an Esri base map, CARTO, Stamen, Mapbox, or even made by the PLA, as long as it looks antique and is in English.) If you must, you may add some masking, etc., to give the map text and muted colors.
The user must not be allowed to zoom out to space. In fact, the panning bounds should be limited to no more than 10 degrees latitude or longitude beyond the dataset extent and the user must not be allowed to zoom out past the total data extent. The map may zoom in as far as necessary up to a metropolitan area zoom level (not sure what level that is exactly but limit it around there).
# Locate the Data
Each places should be located on the map as a point and color coded (in period-appropriate colors by category).
# Story Pane
The map should have a floating pane that is draggable (by clicking and dragging on the header) and movable. When the map loads, it should start in the lower right, with modern margins (e.g., 5-10px) from the edges of the browser window.
The title of the pane should be “Churchill’s Journey” and the first event (probably his birth I’m guessing, should be loaded and zoomed in on with the map to start.
If there is a picture available, load the image link URL into the panel. If it’s landscape, have it at the top of the panel. If it’s portrait mode, have it fill 2/3s of the panel’s width or less and ensure the image isn’t larger than 150px in height (constrain width based on that).
Below, place Event Title followed by the Year as a title.
Below that the category using the same font color as the categorical point symbol.
Then, the place and country (when available).
Below that the description.
Below that the URL to any follow-up sources.
Below that a
In the panel, if there is a picture, it should be
At the bottom, a small button on the left that says “Previous” and when clicked goes to the event preceding the current one, and on the right a button that says “Next” that goes to the next event.
In this way, the user can go through Churchill’s entire life one event at a time.
# Title in the upper left
Come up with some stoic and concise title for a map about Winston Churchill celebrating him.
Use a Serif font from Google fonts that works for early Twentieth Century.
# Filters
In the lower left have a minimized panel floating with the same margins as the story panel on the lower right, but in this case from the left and bottom browser windows. (Symmetrical margin spacing is what I’m saying.)
It should be labeled “Filter by Category”. When clicked, it should open and show the different event categories in alphabetical order and in the color of their symbology. They are multi-selectable and all are selected by default.
When only one is selected, only that category’s events are shown on the map and the panel updates to the closest event from where it was currently in the order of viewing. If more than one is selected, all events from both are shown and the panel updates simiarly. If none are selected, all events are shown by default. Make it intuitive and logical.
Beneath the filters put a button called “Sources”. This should open a modal with APIs used, Web Mapper GPT hyperlink, data source(s) (i.e., Wikipedia), and any other important info — i.e., a link to a provenance.json.