Maps of the Week

This week Airbnb released a custom designed map showcasing some interesting facts about Airbnb users around the world. The map also features real-time guest check-ins and activity around Airbnb's #OneLessStranger campaign.

The map itself contains two zoom levels. You can zoom from an interactive WebGL 3d globe to a nicely designed two dimensional map of the world. The map uses custom designed map tiles and markers. You can even add yourself to the map by taking part in Airbnb's #OneLessStranger campaign.


On the evening of December 4th 1944 the British Royal Air Force dropped over 245,000 bombs on the German city of Heilbronn. The attack caused the death of over 6,500 people and completely destroyed the historic center of the city.

Operation Sawfish is an impressive narrated guide to the destruction of Heilbronn on the 4th December 1944. The guide chronicles the events of the evening using historical photos and a number of Leaflet powered maps.

This interactive guide to Operation Sawfish is wonderfully produced and the animated, narrated maps in the presentation are particularly impressive. You can read about how the interactive guide was created over on the Digilab blog. The blog post is in German but the Operation Swordfish interactive guide itself is available both in German and English.


Who wouldn't marry a man who can create a lovely map like this?

The Proposal is an animated story map recounting the courtship and relationship between Antin and Laura. As this animated map plays out we are taken through the first meeting of our future lovebirds, their first date, first kiss, first declaration of love and finally to Antin's proposal of marriage.

An animated polyline ties the whole map together as we follow Antin's movements over 392 days. The whole experience is enhanced through the addition of photos of Antin and Laura from their courtship & travels, some lovely map transitions between map styles, background music and the use of page turning animations.



Sketch Map is a clever interactive map which uses D3.js and Walkway.js to sketch a road map one little bit at a time. Zoom in and out on the map or pan around and you can observe how the roads and transit lines are sketched out in real-time.

If you want to have a play around with this yourself the code for Sketchcart is available under an MIT license on Github.