Maps and Mappers of the 2019 GeoHipster calendar — Pete King, June

Q: Tell us about yourself.

A: I work in Wellington, New Zealand, as a GIS analyst/ spatial developer at Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) in the Topography team. Day to day, I mostly work in a small team developing inhouse QGIS plugins or processing data using open source tools, but I try to find opportunities to create maps, icons or posters whenever I can. Sometimes its communist style posters about hot desking or Map Man (my coworker who gets called on to save the day with map emergencies), other times it’s more serious, like the Matariki Map.

Q: Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like people to know).

A: The Matariki map came from some really nice constellation design I had come across, which just sat in the back of my head for a while until I finally put two and two together as Matariki was getting closer last year. Matariki is becoming more and more popular in New Zealand, and I live in a small seaside town just out of Wellington that hosts amazing Matariki celebrations with great stories for the kids and walks to find the glow worms, but I still hadn’t delved too deeply into the history of Matariki. I am lucky enough to have amazing tikanga (customs) advisors at LINZ who were able to help me to understand its importance and give the design I had some real depth and background. For me personally the most interesting part of the journey was learning about Matariki’s shifts through history: once, it was a significant celebration, then it was almost entirely forgotten, and now it’s experiencing this amazing revival (including its widespread embrace by Pākehā [settler] culture) due to the emergence of tikanga and Te Reo Māori (Māori language) initiatives.

Q: Tell us about the tools, data, etc., you used to make the map.

A: This map was made using QGIS, Inkscape and open data from LINZ (data.linz.govt.nz) so I’m gonna use this to tell you about how much I love open source, and throw in a shameless plug for FOSS4G SotM Oceania! I was lucky enough to get my first GIS job after uni at LINZ, where there were already strong champions of open source and open data. Even though my job was a lot different to what it is now, I was still using QGIS and plugins we had developed in house. My passion for open source started properly two years ago, when I was able to go to FOSS4G Boston and more importantly the amazing QGIS users conference in Nødebo, Denmark. I’ve always been an empathetic person (one of my first jobs was a veterinary nurse), and more of a sharer than a hoarder, so it’s no surprise that the incredible community and ideas behind open source made a real impression on me at these conferences. I also love great food and Nødebo was up there with the best I’ve had, which would definitely have helped win me over. Since these conferences I have been tinkering more and more with creating maps in QGIS and using my inkscape poster design skills to add those finishing touches. As well as getting deeper and deeper into plugin development at work, don’t get me started on how amazing automatic testing is. But there is one thing I love more than open source and that’s having a FOSS4G in our own backyard, and this year it is in Wellington and LINZ is helping to organise it! I missed out going to last year’s conference in Melbourne and everyone keeps going and on about how amazing it was so I won’t be missing out on this year’s. Though I did get to go to Boston and Denmark, and a tea towel with my map and logo design was brought back for me, so I probably shouldn’t complain. So if you want to see some of the amazing open source work going on in Oceania, or drag along coworkers to expose them to open source, you should definitely come along on the 12-15 November. https://foss4g-oceania.org/ Shameless plug over.

For the map itself I used a combination of populated places data from Koordinates, as well as highways and elevation data from LINZ. I styled the populated places so that larger cities appeared as brighter stars, and joined them using the major highways as a guide. To create the milkyway like cloud in the background I played with different elevations till I found a coverage I liked the look of. Once the map had been designed I exported to svg and loaded in inkscape. I used inkscape to create the custom font for the title by turning the text to a path (treating it like vector data) and adding in the koru like circle at the end of some letters. I also used it for placing and aligning the text on the side, I personally find aligning easier in inkscape.

(Not my tea towel, mines is locked inside a vault for safe keeping.)


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