Another November means another #30DayMapChallenge. As I mentioned in last week’s post I’m doing this again, focused on the Gulf of Mexico. This is mainly as a protest at how the major map providers have voluntarily followed a silly and non legally binding executive order on renaming it based on the whims of one person’s ego.
I don’t know very much about the Gulf and have spent little time in the regions surrounding it (see Day 4’s map) so this should be a learning experience for me. I’m already finding it challenging to tie every theme to the Gulf while also trying to be at least a bit creative. Here it goes, each days theme is listed below with commentary where needed:
Day 1 - Points.
Oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Data source: databasin.org
Day 2 - Lines
Oil and gas pipelines. Data source: NOAA
Day 3 - Polygons
States surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. In the case of Cuba these are provinces. I intentionally left country names and boundaries off to try and show this as more of an international region, however the boundaries are still pretty clear.
Day 4 - My Data. The prompt is to “map something personal” so here is a hand drawn map of where I’ve been along the Gulf.
Day 5 - Earth. Bathymetry of the Gulf of Mexico. Data source: Gulf Coastal Ocean Observing System.
I found this fun sinking font called Titanic. At first I only had the Gulf labeled but then I was reminded of the Tragically Hip’s song “New Orleans is Sinking” and decided I had to see how that looked in this font.
Next week - hopefully more!
