Make your own custom map

[waiteasy]

MapMaker is a free map making tool to help educators and journalists  to quickly create customized, colored maps.

Users can select colors and apply them directly to individual states by clicking on the map, making it easy to visualize patterns, comparisons, and geographic concepts.

USA map maker

Europe map maker

Completed maps can be downloaded for use in assignments, presentations, lesson materials, or openly shared educational resources.

I would love to get your thoughts on:

• Does the interface feel intuitive for students/non-GIS users?

• Are there specific maps that you think must be added?

• How could this be improved for your specific curriculum?

Thanks!

[VenkataKondepati]

Hi @waiteasy,

It looks good for non-GIS users or students to play and learn about the basics. 

Do you have plans to add more features, such as filtering or comparison?

Do you have a GitHub repo, and are you open to contributing?

[waiteasy]

Hi, thank you for your feedback.

I do plan to add more features, I'm trying to understand what is most useful, I'm currently thinking about adding markers to the maps.

I currently do not have a repo to share.

[tuoaawg26]

YES, but haven't had sufficient access to GitHub for free. 

[Gisbert61]

Would be nice to cover the rest of the globe (98.3%)  😉 but i understand you have to start somewhere.

[waiteasy]

Hi! I’m planning to keep adding more maps / features. I just want to avoid building things no one uses. Is there a particular map you’d like to see?

[Gisbert61]

How about Europe?

[waiteasy]

You can access other maps from the menu, I updated this post to include the Europe map.

[ODWC_GIS]

Pretty nice.  🙂

Infill Color/Pattern
     »»Render the Patterns under the Outlines.  You allowed the user to enthicken the outlines, but it begins to look odd under the infill patterns.
     »»No Undo Option.
     »»Eventually, I realized I could use the Eyedropper to select an as-yet unfilled-state to set the color to the default grey, and overwrite the fill.

     »»Very good use of pattern infill, for when colors may be indistinguishable.

Text
     »»Give the option to use a solid white background behind text?  Or a translucent white?
     »»I zoomed in to my state, filled the surrounding states, and made a key that was hard to see atop the colors and patterns.
     »»Same for the Title.

Europe Map
     »»What projection is this?
     »»Iceland looks a bit weird... do you not include Greenland?  Greenland would look really weird.
     »»Why is United Kingdom shown as single country?

 

I am pleased to see I can use this for annoying the English.

[ODWC_GIS]

Nice assortment of available fonts.  But they're all Bold, and only Bold.

The Map Key is in the same order as the User's order of filling polygons.  It'd be nice to be able to rearrange them after the fact. 

You included the weird bits far north of the "normal" Norway, but you've not included Greenland?  Nope.  You need to fix that.  And when you fix that, pull the countries of Great Britain apart too.

I say, but this is fun!

 

 I should probably stop soon...