Tuesday, November 04, 2014

The Interactive Paper Map


Hans Hack is a German web developer who has created a number of interesting interactive maps. Hans' Straßenkrieg is one of my favorite German maps. This map reveals the history behind Berlin street names which have a military connection.

The map highlights Berlin streets which have been named after battles, important military leaders or German army regiments. The colors of the roads indicate the historical period associated with the road's name, e.g. Prussian, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism or post-WWII. If you select a road on the map you can read a brief explanation of the military relevance of the road's name and click-through to read a more detailed account of the person or battle memorialized.


I also like Hans' interactive paper cut-out map. Paper cut maps can be very beautiful however they aren't very useful as maps. Therefore Hans decided to make an interactive version of his paper cut map of Berlin.

Hans created map tiles from a photo of his paper map of Berlin and used Leaflet.js to create the interactive map. The map is even geo-refrenced, which means you can click on the map and get the latitude and longitude of any point on the map.


I also like Hans' Animated Map of Berlin. This map uses three different base maps, each with a different color scheme. The map then continually fades between the three different base maps to create a map which is always changing color.

Hans has created a number of other interesting interactive digital maps which you can view on his Portfolio page.

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