Author Archives: Ian Muehlenhaus

Happy World Day against the Death Penalty (283/365)

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Happy World Day against the Death Penalty!

First of all, I want to commend the organizers of this day for leaving no ambiguity about what is supposed to be celebrated today.

Seriously, it’s really a good thing to be against certain things, but most of marketing behind a majority of these days is opposed to the word “against”. They often end up with horrible titles… like “World Octopod Eating Day”, which you may be excused for thinking means you should celebrate eating octopus, but would likely — since as far as I’m aware, the day does not yet exist — be a day against eating octopus.

So today we have an against! Hip-hip-hooray! Enough with this “everything has to be a thumbs-up,” rah-rah crap! The world is full of bad things. Resist!

And that is why I chose it. I love being against things. I’m generally anti-establishment โ€“ to a fault. I even encourage my kids to break my own rules… leading to confusion and consternation all around. But I digress… there is no need to go into my lack of parenting skills.

This day gained particular prominence in my mind given the Untied States of America [sic] Secretary of War [sic] announced that he is going to “let” Americans watch the murder of a former US soldier who himself murdered a bunch of people.

This reminded me of when I went and watched Starship Troopers in the theater in Pecs, Hungary, back in 1998 with a cadre of British, German, Austrian, and Hungarian friends. We couldn’t stop talking about how ludicrous and comical it was. Absurd: live executions as reality television in a modern society? Hahaha…

But those were the Clinton years. These are the Trump ones. And so it is happening, I guess. Because… yeah, humans! [sigh]

So here is a map showing the counts of everyone that has been officially killed by any state government in the last 20 years โ€“ and with question marks for those countries that are killing thousands or hundreds and not reporting or being transparent. There is some data on why they were murdered โ€“ often drug related offenses.

And really, that’s all I have to say on the matter. Happy World Day against the Death Penalty!

This was a very fast map. Like… 15 minutes and most of that was waiting for it to collect and create the datasets (like 10). Simply a dataset creation and very short mapping prompt and done.

It’s Friday. I have to go play the Star War Deckbuilding Game at my friend’s house. I’m playing the Empire. Wait a second… ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

Enjoy your World Day against the Death Penalty. Or as we say around here: have a nice Saturday.

View Map Here

Web Mapper GPT Prompt

HI there. I would like to make a global-scaled map, equal area, of the world that shows the following datasets:

 

  • Countries with the death penalty currently
  • Number of people killed over the past 20 years.
  • And for each country, the crimes resulting in execution shown visually proportionally somehow.

 

No choropleth should be used, beause these are raw numbers. So be creative with charts. You may use interactive and cross-filtered charts/histograms/heatmaps, etc., if you like.

 

 

Intention

To bring awareness to where in the world the death penalty is still prevalent and how many people have been killed since 2005 from death penalty. This is to celebrate Stop Capital Punishment Day. Dark background. Dark theme. Harsh and alarming contrasting colors. Yellow and Red or Orange on black, etc.

Audience

People who are anti-capital punishment on the internet. Like the Bluesky crowd… they might like this. Maybe LinkedIn people too.

Guardrails

  • Don’t use choropleth for raw data counts.
  • Don’t be afraid to use info windows on desktop with charts that update. Cross-filtering between charts and countries where it makes sense works too.
  • On mobile, make it less interactive and just visualize cleanly due to the smaller screens.

Please use the following MapTiler tileset and scheme using Equal Earth projection via the MapTiler SDK JS. Please add an on-map attribution to NLGIS Labs and Web Mapper.

Also, please replace any reference to webmapgpt.com to webmapper.org. Thanks.

Mention #365DaysOfMaps in the sources modal. Please give it a stark and dark name as the theme requires. Thank you!

Pop-up windows should show relevant death data in countries that have it, and the country name, and a list of violations that have led to the death penalty, ,etc. Please make them stylish with black backgrounds and no arrows to the feature, etc.

Leif Erikson Day (282/365)

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Leif Erikson is very popular where I grew up. Minnesota was settled by Scandinavians. There were still Swedish, Norwegian, and even Finnish โ€“ verdict is still out if its part of Scandinavia, I know โ€“ newspapers in Duluth through World War II.

My home town has a Leif Erikson Park and a Leif Erikson replica knorr boat. We often ate lutefisk for special occasions regularly, which seems absurd in hindsight, since no one actually enjoyed it. My surname was Norwegian for foothill before I changed it. There were Swedish Lutheran churches and Norwegian Lutheran churches in the same town. And the Finns… they had their own town up north โ€“ Finland.

All of this is to say, when I saw what today represents, I got excited. I knew several Leifs in school โ€“ a more common name than Sven but not quite as popular as Bjorn. To be able to map the great Viking explorer… it’s an honor. My grandma would be proud. Seriously.

Leif holds an unprecedented place in my mind due to years of banal Viking-ism and passive indoctrination. Thus, imagine my surprise once I realized how minimal Leif’s exploits were (distance wise) compared to the Polynesians, etc. Admittedly, the waters of the North Atlantic and North Sea are definitely more unforgiving if you go overboard or get too wet. But the distances on an orthographic projection (and globe) look far more paltry than they do represented on a Mercator or Equal Earth projection. (Yeah, Equal Earth is earning its 15-minutes of fame right now, but it’s still a projection; all projections fail even their most fervent adherents at some point. Never marry a projection โ€“ metaphorically.)

No styling. No anything really. I asked my Data Creator agent to find Leif’s famous stops and rough coordinates. I asked Web Mapper to create the map. And I entered a free Mapbox token code to get the globe to show a dark base map.

The whole affair took about 10 minutes. And it’s good enough, because playoff baseball is on tonight, and honestly, little else matters in my life right now. I’m more addicted to baseball right now than the Wallander series earlier this year. And don’t even ask about the watching the Vikings… I gave up on that franchise a long time ago.

But I’ll never give up on the OG Viking โ€“ Leif Erikson.

So happy Leif Erikson Day everyone! If it weren’t for him and his fellow Norse raiders, the Irish wouldn’t have red hair, English wouldn’t have such diverse wording, and Iceland would have trees. Skol!!!

View map here

 

Original Web Mapper Prompt

Can you please create a 3D globe map that is locked to norhtern Europe the arctic area and north American for panning controls, etc. I would like it to show Leif Erikson’s travels over time. Dashed or dotted line progression between points. A forward and back button and consistently place info window (bottom on mobile). Please use Viking-esque/Nordic-esque (but readable) fonts and Viking-themed colors (not Minnesota Vikings but traditional colors.

No animations. Just forward and backward, beginning with the earliest.

Is it possible to add this to a MapLibre globe? Does TileMapper allow for global projections, because then I’ll add one of my styles from there. Thanks!

World Octopus Day (281/365)

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Today celebrates octopods. I do love octopods. I mean, they scare me too. I saw the movie Popeye in theaters as a young lad in the 1980s, and I was terrified of octopods for years afterward. Then I read a great New Yorker article about them, and I liked them again.

In sum: octopods get a bad rap. They have traditionally been used on maps โ€“ and elsewhere โ€“ to symbolize scary things. They aren’t scary; they are wicked smart! (I highly recommend the Netflix documentary “My otcopus teacher.” Amazing film!)

So naturally, I’m disinclined to go out of my way to disparage octopods. They already have an unearned reputation for being associated with bad things. Tainting people against octopods is one of the last things I would ever want to do…

But unfortunately, even though it’s last, it’s apparently still on the list. Let me explain….

Originally, I thought I’d make a global map of octopod sightings and locations using this gargantuan dataset my data agent found online. But after I downloaded over 100,000 sightings my python script โ€“ or the data server? โ€“ crapped out and since I’m exhausted and running out of time… another octopod as villain map is still available on the list.

But… I am at least tying it into other things. That makes it okay, right?

There was a film called Blackfish โ€“ another great documentary if you want to become depressed about the depravity of humans โ€“ I watched maybe 14 years ago… and there is the Bubonic Plague in the news today, which is often referred to as “black death,” even though it results in white spots in the lungs when x-rayed.

And so I thought: I can make one of those octopods as villain maps representing the potential contemporary outbreak of the black plague, which Russia is assuring me is not the black plague at all but just an unknown respiratory ailment that happened to kill an otherwise healthy 28-year old working at a black plague center. I mean… that makes about as much sense as a lot of the stuff the US government spouts these days, so… who am I to doubt, right?

So in sum:

  • Octopods are not bad. They’re actually really smart and awesome. I love them! (Though, lobsters do not. So they aren’t bad for humans. They are for some sea life, however.)
  • Blackfish is a great movie, that has nothing to do with octopods at all. Octopods aren’t fish. Orcas aren’t either, but blackfish is about orcas. But if you watch the movie it makes sense metaphorically.
  • Black plague, and really โ€“ most likely โ€“ all types of plague, is bad for humans. I doubt it really impacts lobsters that much, but since I am in solidarity with lobsters (this week), I decided to represent black plague โ€“which is very bad for humans with a 100% fatality rate when not treated immediately โ€“ as an evil (from the perspective of a lobster) octopod colored black like the plague and also metaphorically representing a black sheep, I suppose… though, there are no white sheep plagues, so to speak, and I actually really, really, really love all sheep. (I highliy recommend the film The Sheep Detective, which is not a documentary but you’d be mistaken for thinking it was one. Amazing!)

Without further ado, digression, or explanation โ€“ because only people that are truly guilty find the need to overly defend their decisions, though by no means am I implying that am guilty of anything here, of course, I’m just saying if I were guilty of laziness, last-minute slap-dashedry, well then I would probably try to over explain the folly of the map I’m about to present, but fortunately that is simply not the case here today โ€“ here is the World Octopus Day map.

P.S. I know the map isn’t completely accurate. It’s a pictorial representation of a nightmare scenario where a giant octopod in a hazmat suit gets into a plague lab in Irkutsk (of RISK fame!) and starts hurling the black plague globally. For those that are confused, it’s true: there aren’t really octopods in Central Asia, but I have seen one in a hazmat suit at a rave, I think, once.


Click to see full size version

Original ChatGPT Prompt from Phone

Hi there. I would like to make a traditional, old school satirical and wimmel welt artistically styled map with an octopod as the central character. I would like this map to be of a very dark octopus (I. E., metaphorically representing) the Black Plague of Irkutsk right now. That is where the main body should be, but as it sits in Irkutsk, it’s tentacles should be reaching outside of Russia and spreading droplets (like sneeze droplets) across Europe, Africa, Canada and the US, China, and elsewhere. The map should be pictorial and cartoony, with people naively going about their lives, world leaders from different countries, telling everyone to calm down, etc. also, the octood:’s head should bear an uncanny resemblance to someone in a black hazmat facemask. Somewhere in front of and near the octopus should be a broken test tube. With a small pool of black liquid protruding and touching Vlad, the octopod. No title is needed. Just an octopod on a map. Thanks!

World Translation Day (273/365)

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My dorm-mate at Pecs University (formerly Janus Pannonius University) in Pecs, Hungary, was Pisti. Pisti was an ethnic-Hungarian from Cluj-Napolca, Transylvania. And he was a translator extraordinaire. (Still is!)

Nicolae Ceauศ™escu’s somewhat-pro-West policies also allowed him to learn French and English in the Romanian school system on top of his native Hungarian and Romanian. Pisti even took courses in Esperanto for fun at some point โ€“ always an amazing party trick, even if no one could tell if he was making it up or not.

Thus, it came as no surprise to me that, after graduating from Pecs, Pisti wound up working for the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg as a translator. Before AI, we needed humans. Fortunately for Pisti, knowing EU bureaucracy and labor laws, there’s a good chance Pisti will still be able to retire a translator โ€“ bonus: his job should become even easier.

And all of this is to say that creating maps in multiple languages is super easy these days. First, you have Open Street Map datasets, and Natural Earth ones, that come with myriad languages embedded. And then, APIs like MapTiler SDK JS makes it simple to translate base maps with the click of a button.

So today’s map: An Equal Earth reference map using Soviet-inspired tiles (because apparently I really miss the Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s these days) designed using Map Styler and another agent I created that allows users to switch the reference map to any language they want (within reason, I don’t believe Esperanto is included).

And that’s a wrap!

View Map Here

Web Mapper GPT Prompt

Hi there. International translation day is coming up. I would like to create a world map, equal area projection, in innumerable languages. It will just be a reference map, but it should be in ever language represented in the Natural Langauge datasets.

I would like the map to contain the following natural earth layers that will change and update to be more detailed as the user zooms in and pans.

  • Countries without Lakes (110m, 50m, 10m)
  • Ocean Areas (110m, 50m, 10m)
  • Populated places (50m, 10m)
  • Rivers (50m, 10m)
  • Lakes (110m, 50m, 10m)
  • States and Provinces (50m, 10m)
  • Urban Areas (10m)

These should be styled in a manner that is clear from a visual hierarchy perspective. As the user zooms in, the styling can change to become clearer with more layers and geometric detail. Not sure if this will best be designed as a tileset. If so, can you create an TileMapper tileset that can be uploaded to their cloud platform or my TileMapper server, perhaps?

Panning and zooming should naturally be possible. No need to zoom in super far, just far enough to see urban areas at the largest scale, major cities, and small city-state countries. No zooming out to space. Also, initial zoom should be at the World Map position. on whatever screen is being used. You may ask the user turn their phone to landscape position when the map opens on a handheld before showing the map.

In the upper left subdued (for a title) type, with a gradient background, use the title: “Human Organization, 2026”. In the upper right, please add a drop down with flag icons/emojis for on the left and languages on the right (the name of the language in the native language). The default is English (Union Jack, not US flag). Then place the languages in alpha order and when the user switches them change the title, pop-up, and label languages displayed to that language.

At small scale, simply show the map without labels. Once the user zooms in far enough for the 1:50m data to load, start labeling countries (within borders, otherwise leave off), and cities where space allows at further zoom levels at 1:50m. Cities can be clicked to show just the name in the currently selected language (and population if that’s available in a minimal pop-up. Please label the ocean areas but not too dominantly (use italics for all water labels).

Finally, when the user zooms in far enough to see the 1:10m datasets, label populated places, countries (only once, though, and in the middle of the country boundaries roughly ideally, large lakes (with italics), and allow pop-ups (i.e., when someone clicks on rivers lakes, etc).

If it makes sense to design all of this as a tile set and then create transparent layers that get loaded on top of the tileset or something for pop ups we can do that too. Please advise a best path forward to achieve my vision.

I would like the map to follow the attached style guide by and large. Obviously, we won’t be showing topographic data, but the minimalist styling and great visual hierarchy decisions of the Swiss should prove useful. Thanks! Focus on colors and visual hierarchy in that style. ๐Ÿ™‚

Thanks!

P.S. Include a link to a provenance file in the “i” information modal. A small “i” icon should be adjacent (to the left of) the language dropdown selector.

In the provenance file please include “Cartographer: [Ian Muehlenhaus]\([https://www.muehlenhaus.com](https://www.muehlenhaus.com))” and “Created for the [Map Design Commission]\([https://mapdesign.icaci.org](https://mapdesign.icaci.org)) 365 Days of Maps Campaign, 2026.”

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National Coffee Day (272/365)

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This is not to confused with International Coffee Day, which is October 1st. So don’t get mad at Ken if he makes a map of coffee next week.

Now that this fact is squared away…

I am getting more interested in how well the prompt cartography workflow can be used to create print or static image maps. Obviously, Ken is the image-map guru this year. But I didn’t want to make yet another US, Albers Equal-Area map of US counties with dumb pop-ups showing information no one cares about. I decided to try my luck at a simple US county choropleth map using straight up ChatGPT โ€“ with agent-derived data, though! ๐Ÿ™‚

I used a data creator agent to find the information I needed and create a dataset for me using US Census data on coffee shops by county and US county populations. All of the data is only as current as 2023, but hey… it’s a map of National Coffee Day, not a Rabies Dashboard.

Once I had the datasets, it was really easy. I uploaded them straight to ChatGPT (regular), clicked on Image Maker or whatever, and gave it a fairly specific prompt (i.e., took a minute to write).

The first map draft was really quite good. But I wasn’t quite happy with some minor layout issues. So I marked it up with the pen in ChatGPT, told it what I was thinking, and that’s a wrap!

View map at full-size

ChatGPT Prompt

Please create an equal-area map of the United States (with Alaska and Hawaii tucked somewhere convenient so it fits in a standard letter-landscape format) showing the attached dataset using a color-blind friendly, sequential scheme with brown. Give a textured hatching for counties with no values โ€“ they are null. You should map the number of coffee shops per 10,000 people by county.

Provide a title that is matter of factual. Mention is is National Coffee Day.

Somewhere along the bottom mention: “#365DaysOfMaps” and “mapdesign.icaci.org”

Make the map professional. White background. Style it like a NYT choropleth map. Nothing too dramatic. Minimalist. Less is more. Tufte style.

Use an aesthetically clean and thematically appropriate color scheme for coffee day. ๐Ÿ™‚

Thanks!

 

World Rabies Day (271/365)

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This is timely. Just last week, a woman in Minneapolis picked up and touched a sick bat. I believe she was caught on video doing so.

Turned out the bat had rabies. Suddenly, the city was aflutter trying to determine who the person was and get in contact with her to give her a rabies shot.

Rabies is scary. It is 100% fatal. There is no known cure once symptoms set in. It’s real-world zombie virus, in some ways.

Today is World Rabies Day. I imagine it is to foster awareness about rabies, rather than to promote rabies itself. I’ve never totally understood the naming conventions of these days, honestly. I guess what I’m getting at, and I make this point in prompting too: sometimesย  a select adjective or adverb can help make natural language clearer. Alas…

Happy World Rabies Day, everyone!

Today’s map shows reported deaths from rabies in recent years by countries that report such things. Estimated deaths from rabies, by epidemiologists that research and estimate such things. And the difference between reported deaths and (the far more likely to be accurate) estimated deaths.

Perhaps most excitingly for me, I created a new tool that turns my Map Styler GPT schemas into MapTiler vector tile sets. Even better, I found out in Brno several weeks ago that the MapTiler SKD JS now allows these tiles to be shown using Equal Earth projection. So this is a slippy map in the Equal Earth projection using a War Games / MS DOS CRT-inspired base map. Yes, I now have an agent designing tile schemes for specific projects โ€“ in about a minute.

Kudos to TileMapper for pushing out an Equal Earth API fix too. It’s amazing โ€“ even if the tiles here are a little ugly.

“That’s a wrap!”

World Zombie Virus World Map Zombie Virus South Asia Map

View Map Here

Web Mapper GPT Prompt

Intent and Purpose

Create an informative and educational, though simple, map of reported rabies deaths and estimated rabies deaths around the world. This map is meant to commemorate World Rabies Day.

Audience

Really, just people checking out the 365 Days of Maps blog and those who might see it posted on LinkedIn. Casual observers of maps.

Map Style

If possible, please use my MapTiler base map found here “https://api.maptiler.com/maps/01a0def8-1a1a-7ae6-ab02-8e237601e737/style.json?key={never_going_to_get_it}” for tiles. Also, if you can figure out how, please use the MapTiler SDK JS to show the map tiles using Equal Earth or Equal Area projection โ€“ which is now possible, I’ve read.

Use proportional symbols that look like the rabies virus itself (a picture is attached) for you to design from. Make the icons/symbols stand out from the dark and green background of the maptiler tiles. You can also display discrepency in official and estimated as the default view too if that is available.

Allow the user to show reported and estimated counts, both, perhaps with a toggle.

Make the title intimidating… something about the Original Zombie Virus or something.

Do not put any subtitles or anything like that. Allow the map to speak for itself.

Guardrails

  • don’t use choropleth representation for any raw count data
  • if you decide to map discrepancies, then you can use chropleth.
  • no need for a legend on this map. It is interactive. Have the pop-ups show the data by country.
  • disable the blue on-focus box of Chrome and other browsers on the map. I hate that shit. ๐Ÿ™‚

Sources Modal

Please have a small “i” button somewhere inconspicuous on the map that opens an “Information” modal.

Provide a link to a provenance file, any data metadata information provided, the rabies Excel workbook, a mention of the https://mapdesign.icaci.org 365 Days of Maps Campaign, how it’s World Rabies Day on September 28, 2026.

Also link to Prompt Cartographer: [Ian Muehlenhaus]\([https://www.muehlenhaus.com](https://www.muehlenhaus.com))

Made with tools at [Web Mapper GPT]\([https://www.webmapgpt.com](https://www.webmapgpt.com)).

Learn more about [prompt cartography]\([https://www.promptcartography.com](https://www.promptcartography.com)) and begin [making maps via natural language]\([https://www.promptcartography.com](https://www.promptcartography.com)) today.

World Tourism Day (270/365)

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In a way, we are all tourists now.

We move about much more than any other generation. Or at least… it seems like it.

It occurred to me while talking to my mum on the phone the other day that I spend a vast majority of my time within about 750 square meters of territory โ€“ honestly. I’m in my house or in my garage or wandering the property between. Occasionally you may find me at the local grocery store or Target, or about 100 meters to the north at some local softball fields, but that’s quite rare.

However, when I do leave the woods on touristic adventures, I tend to go “big,” so to speak. I travel far and definitely leave a hefty carbon footprint.

I was just in Czechia at EuroCarto, for example. It was a great experience but required a few carbon-questionable modes of travel: Ubers, flights, trains, and an 8-hour drive across the Carpathian in an SUV of some variety. What stood out to me most from all these modes of travel were the stunted cornfields and parched sunflowers of Central Europe… and the film Dead Man’s Wire, which I viewed at 10,000 meters somewhere over the Atlantic. The point is: my tourism is directly related โ€“ to parched fields, not the movie.

Why am I going into such detail about my trip? Well, I suppose it’s because today’s map really got me thinking about this more than I normally do. Sure, I nod along when colleagues tell me they won’t go to any conference that they can’t attend by rail. I admire their steadfast beliefs and how they take action to support them. I think it’s incredibly cool. I can’t see myself ever doing that; I like traveling and seeing the world too much and I’m a bit (perhaps naively) techno-utopian when it comes to climate change. I think sustainability is admirable, but the only way we can keep the earth from getting too hot for humans is far more technological meddling, not less. Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, is an amazing read and largely shaped my perspective โ€“ for better or worse. For the record, though, I’ve been inspired. I’m taking a train to NACIS in October. Not only is it better for the environment, it’s less stressful and about $400 cheaper.

Anyway, I’m totally going off tangent here. And this blog is about maps. So below is another one…

Today’s map: sure, tourism can be great for the economy, but as with everything in capitalism, there are hidden costs. And tourism results in a lot of superfluous carbon. That’s what I decided to map today. There are two maps in one. You can flip between them at the bottom of the map interface.

To summarize the intro to this blog, I think I was free-writing about my recent carbon-filled escapade to subconsciously prove the point that I’m not at all innocent when it comes to carbon emissions and travel. I’m certainly not preaching anything here… I emit a helluva lot of carbon; I’m largely at peace with it.

 

However, creating this map has certainly made me more aware of my impact and got me thinking about it on a Saturday; so in a way, this is a win for my friends who are far more fervent sustainability advocates. Making this map โ€“ not actually viewing it but making it โ€“ has really got me thinking about this more than anything else up until now. And that’s kind of cool โ€“ at least to me.

 

Environmental reflection through prompt cartography. Except… how many gallons of water were used making this map… D’oh! ๐Ÿ™

The takeaway is simple: enjoy your travels, but the next time someone says tourism is great for the local economy โ€“ and if you are from Duluth, Minnesota, you know it is! โ€“ remember that there is a real environmental cost to your enjoyment. (Though, in Duluth, you’d be forgiven for wishing for a bit more warming in the winter months.)

View the map here

Web Mapper GPT (which is going away in early December… more soon)

Hi there. I would like to make a map celebrating world tourism day. The map should show both information about domestic versus international tourists by country. However, more importantly and and interestingly, it should show a “Dark Side of Tourism”. I almost envision this a map turning from light-mode to dark-mode with the click of a button. The Dark Side of Tourism should highlight the carbon footprint of tourism country by country.

First things first, can you examine the datasets I have created with my other GPT, and come up with a plan for making this map based on the data we have. If there are large gaps in the data, please let me know. We will proceed from there.

Key Facts

Intention & Purpose

Create a public, social-media campaign map for 365 Days of Maps and Global Tourism Day. Audience will be wide and varied across the internet. Mostly European and American professionals, because I’m only on LinkedIn. The map will live on the WebMapGPT.com site, though.

Scale & Map Rules

  • The map should be equal earth. It should be pannable and zoomable, but not out into outer space and no need to zoom in past an area the size of Belgium.
  • Legend should not say legend but be descriptive. It should start minimized, and when the header is clicked it should expand. It should be the same width minimized as maximized.
  • The map must work well and have a good UX on mobile devices. Likely that means pop-ups from the bottom and legends being easily hidden, hamburger or settings button hiding submenu items, etc.
  • Use the attached style for color, font, and chrome decisions.
  • Data in spreadsheets will need polygon, country geometries. Please join.

Guardrails

  • Do not add exposition about data reliability, sources, or the day or what the map is showing.
  • Come up with a poignant, concise title about both The Good and the Bad or similar of tourism.
  • In the sources modal, mention the website WebMapGPT.com, Cartographer: Ian Muehlenhaus, and also that the dataset was collected using WebMapGPT.com as well. Give a date of 27 September 2027. Mention the style source and provide a link to Map Design Commission of the ICA (https://mapdesign.icaci.org)

Thanks!

World Rabbit Day (269/365)

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If there was ever a species that probably doesn’t need a day… I mean, rabbits… I feel like they are everywhere. The foxes in my yard catch them all the time. Owls are worse… the rabbits howl bloody murder waking the entire family up. It’s sad.

I try to warn the rabbits when they hop near me in the woods. But they are completely indifferent to my existence โ€“ “Go hide, fools!” I urge, “Don’t be out in the open like this… there is a hawk right over there.” They continue to munch on our garden plants, just looking at me blankly.

Sadly, I don’t speak rabbit. Perhaps AI will crack the human-rabbit interaction code, but until then… I hope they evolve to start looking up once in a while โ€“ at least the rabbit species in my yard.ย  But I guess the foxes and owls have to eat too. :-\

Alas, if I read correctly, World Rabbit Day is meant to celebrate rescuing rabbits and rearing them or something. So I thought for today’s map I would show just how diffuse and widespread these mammalian hoppers are.

I created an Excel dataset and GeoPackage of rabbit species and ranges using my data creator GPT. I then asked regular old ChatGPT to make a map of it. It did pretty well, but it added a horrible compass rose. (My fault! I didn’t guardrail against it in my prompt.)

I also wasn’t happy with the legend, so I annotated the image right in ChatGPT, asked it to add data sources, and called it a day.

Hoppy World Rabbit Day, everyone!

Map of rabbit distributions around the world. Click Here to See Full Size Version and Download Datasets

ChatGPT Conversation

https://chatgpt.com/share/6ab6ea03-4b18-83ea-ae52-9bffbba87fb9

Save a Koala Day (268/365)

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There is no denying it: koalas are damn cute. My daughter loves koalas. She used to draw them all the time.

So I was excited when I saw this day on the calendar. But koala ranges themselves are kind of boring to map. So I thought: why not expand the day a bit, cartographically at least, to map endangered or potentially struggling Australian and Oceanic marsupials.

Then, I had my data creator agent figure out where it could find all of these ranges โ€“ mostly scientific journal articles, I believe โ€“ and scrape the data and then compile it into a single dataset. Well, it gave me a python script that did that.

Finally, I asked Web Mapper GPT to create a map with the dataset with infographic windows that allowed for pictures across the top. Meanwhile, I created 31 unique images of marsupials in the Audubon artistic style and provided them to the site folder.

And here it is… a marsupial range map with artistic pop-ups, and species filters based on endangerment levels, etc. The map layout idea was stolen from the Visualising Conflict and Peace project (keep rocking it, Leibniz-Institut fรผr Lรคnderkunde. I absolutely adore this project and wish I had known about it sooner. I found it via Stanislav Krakowskyi’s addicting Atlas Explorer. A high recommend for those that want to get lost in digital atlases from around the world!

Admittedly, the projection and map balance may not work as well here with marsupials as it does for conflict resolution studies, but I liked it so much looking at that site the last week or so that I had to try to prompt a version into existence. I figured Australia was a good spot to do so.

For fun…

I experimented with creating an ArcGIS StoryMap via a proprietary LLM tool as well.

The result from a single prompt with the images and single dataset was quite satisfactory, honestly.

Take-away: all GIS output will be done using natural-language in the near future (I predict). (Predictions are for suckers, though; so I reserve the right to be wrong.) Natural-language interfaces are being baked into your favorite tools and soon we will probably only be using LLMs to do almost everything โ€“ which will in turn call skills and agents from other software companies.

In other words, I implore young (and old) cartographer to begin learning how to do prompt cartography.

ArcGIS StoryMap Version

And below is the Web Mapper (ChatGPT) version. Thanks for reading and enjoy exploring marsupial ranges in Australia and/or Oceania!

View Map Here

Web Mapper Prompt

Intent
Create a map showing endangered marsupials (in particular koalas) in Australasia as a celebratory and cautious nod to Save the Koala Day.

Purpose
Garner support and feelings for saving marsupial habitat and cute, furry Australian critters. ๐Ÿ™‚

Audience
Online public. Mostly LinkedIn people and visitors to the #365DaysOfMaps blog found at [https://mapdesign.icaci.org](https://mapdesign.icaci.org).

Style
I would like this to be a bit different than the average maps we’ve been making in this series. I’m really inspired by something I saw online recently โ€“ the portion-Earth globe found at this website:

https://visualisingconflictpeace.de/ (screen grab attached)

If we could represent these renges in a stylized, balanced but asymmetrical manner with an orthographic projection (or 3D globe that is not easily rotatable off of Australia/Oceania, I would love it.

Continue reading →

National Punctuation Day (267/365)

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Punctuation. The curse of many. Oxford commas, full-stops (or is it periods?), colons, semicolons, the list goes on ad nauseam.

Punctuation is essential for writing natural languages. But too often we forget or take punctuation marks for granted.

No more! At least, not in the United States. Here we have a special day to celebrate the left- and right-parentheses, as well as the em- and en-dashes and well… All Latin-language based punctuations apparently. Or maybe just English punctuation? The language isn’t specified, which is interesting. Perhaps an oversight of the organizers or a holdover from the assumption that English is an official language in the Constitution perhaps… Alas, it is not.

But I’m not here to debate which punctuation marks from which languages are meant to be included. I’m for all of them. But this map is in English, because I had to draw the line somewhere and I don’t speak Spanish — unfortunately.

I love old typewriters. So I went with a carbon-copy typographic style map. It’s nothing special but I’m happy with it considering I wrote the prompt and this short blog post at a swim meet on my phone. Prompt has two meanings… No one said you couldn’t use both meanings at the same time. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Click above map for larger version.

ChatGPT 5.6 Prompt

Intention
Create a map of the US that is constructed entirely of punctuation marks.

Purpose
To celebrate national punctuation mark day on Thursday September 24

Style
I would love the look of a 1960s manual typewriter used to construct the maps with punctuation marks and perhaps state abbreviations with letters. A couple of x-ed out or /-ed out words and double types and fading ribbons spots would be great. Slight imperfections would lend it credence. Carbon paper sticking out underneath would make a great frame line.

Title
Should be typed in the same font across the top somewhere: “United Punctuation Marks of America.”

Output Style
PNG with slightly yellowed/aged correspondence paper background. Imperfect.

Credits
Lower right or somewhere on the bottom:
“Ian Muehlenhaus / prompt cartography.com”

Guardrails

  • should resemble albers equal area projection shape or comic projection using manual typewriter alignment possibilities.
  • Alaska and Hawaii should be minimal and in the lower left or gulf of Mexico. If in Gulf of Mexico, move credits to the lower left side.

Thanks! Have fun with this! Be creative. Typographic map creativity!