Ulf Treger ulf.treger@dekoder.de 2025.
For creating your own simple map, you'd need
- Desktop-Software QGIS, latest version https://qgis.org/ (it's Free Software :)
- Plugin QuickOSM for QGIS
Background: OpenStreetMap is a collective map created by a huge number of volunteers all over the world. Its geodata (the data you need to create a map) is free (as in freedom). You can do with the data what you want (aquire, copy, change, redistribute), but if you republish ist, you need to reference the creators of the data: "Geodata by OpenStreetMap and its contributors". This is the crucial part of the OSM licence.
Plus, everybody can edit the data in the first place. So if you find a path, street, or any other element is missing or outdated, you can add this via https://www.openstreetmap.org/
QGIS is a desktop GIS (geographic information system) developed by members of the OSM community. It is being actively developed and is very complex in all its functions, but it is also very reliable for basic tasks.
Add a layer with an OpenStreetMap (bitmap) background. This will not be part of the map itself, just for orientation. It comes with the official OSM style.
- Menu: Layer > Add Layer > Add XYZ-Layer
- On the popup at "XYZ-Connections"-Dropdown select "OpenStreetMap"
- Hit the "Add" button
- Close the popup
- You should see the world in full in a Mercator projection
- Adjust with Pan and Zoom (with your mouse/trackpad) to select the scene or area you'd want to cover
QuickOSM is for retreiving data from the OSM database. Download and activate the QuickOSM Plugin
- Menu: Plugins > "Manage plugins"
- On the popup select in the menu on the left side "All"
- Search for "QuickOSM"
- Select "QuickOSM"
- Hit the button "Install plugin"
- Close Popup
Use the QuickOSM Plugin for aquiring geodata
QuickOSM is quering the OpenStreetMap database and it uses the OSM map features (keys and values). More info at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features
You can simply download features you'd need and then style them.
First get the map feature "buildings"
- Menu: Vector > QuickOSM
- On the popup select "Quick query"
- As key "building", the value can be left blank
- In the Popup below, preselected is "In.. "
- Select in the popup "Canvas Extent" (this restricts the download to the visible part of the map)
- Hit the button "run query"
- After a few seconds the buildings appear on the map as polygons, filled with a randomly selected color
- In the layers overview (usually on the lower left of the UI) you now can see different layers, each per vector type (MultiPolygon, Point)
- Double Click the building MultiPolygon layer on the layers menu
- Select "Symbology"
- Here you can select the fill and outlines
- There are a plenty of other options, symbols, presets, a rules editor etc.
- For the example above I used the predefined symbol "hashed black" with 45° hashes
You can also edit the downloaded data, or add things. QGIS is some basic vector manipulation functions, even tracing is possible. Please check to QGIS handbook or at https://docs.qgis.org/3.40/en/docs/training_manual/create_vector_data/index.html
You can export the map as bitmap, PDF or print it.
As we have learned, the width of paths and outlines may not be reproduced correctly when exporting to PDF. It may therefore be necessary to reopen the PDF file via Illustrator or Inkscape to adjust the width as desired. The detour to Illustrator is also helpful if you want to add or change anything on the map manually.
You can use another plugin "qgis2web" to export your map to a static webpage with the map for publishing it on the map.
Useful keys for querying the OSM database with QuickOSM. Each of them has various values you can select.
- Building
- Highway
- Landuse
- Leisure
Parks you can query with the key/value Key: Leisure, Value: Park https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Tag:leisure%3Dpark
Please comment below for suggestions and improvements.