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A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

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Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#11

Post by ludwigschubert »

While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design":

One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users.

The proposed design thus has too low a land area to map area ratio to be very useful.

The projection itself would be useful as a digital map (with zooming and panning) or as an icon, though.

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#12

Post by pavlov »

kuschku wrote: post #8
Chinjut wrote: post #4

The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area . It's of note that there are some ways in which a flat map can never accurately represent a spherical geometry; for example, not even any small patch of a globe can be represented on a flat map with all distances kept faithful.…

It tiles, so it can be used for web maps, you can just rotate it slightly and always have it north-pointing, so it can be used for mobile maps, and it shows the world in an equal view. And it doesn’t distort the shape of continents either, only the composition. This is amazing.

Thanks for explaining the map's benefits much better than the original article!

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#15

Post by ant6n »

kuschku wrote: post #8
Chinjut wrote: post #4

The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area . It's of note that there are some ways in which a flat map can never accurately represent a spherical geometry; for example, not even any small patch of a globe can be represented on a flat map with all distances kept faithful.…

It tiles, so it can be used for web maps, you can just rotate it slightly and always have it north-pointing, so it can be used for mobile maps, and it shows the world in an equal view. And it doesn’t distort the shape of continents either, only the composition. This is amazing.

What do you mean the continents are not distorted. South America looks pretty distorted to me, so does Australia.

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#17

Post by supergreg »

ludwigschubert wrote: post #11

While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design": One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users. The proposed design thus…

The article mentions the map "aims to create maps that represent all land masses and seas as accurately as possible."

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#18

Post by usaphp »

ludwigschubert wrote: post #11

While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design": One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users. The proposed design thus…

But map should be accurate in the first place. It's not like you can just ignore things you don't want to see there just because they are naturally to big and take up too much space

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#19

Post by [deleted] »

ludwigschubert wrote: post #11

While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design": One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users. The proposed design thus…

[deleted]

Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

#20

Post by Grue3 »

supergreg wrote: post #17
ludwigschubert wrote: post #11

While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design": One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps. Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most map users. The proposed design thus…

The article mentions the map "aims to create maps that represent all land masses and seas as accurately as possible."

What does it mean, "as accurately as possible"? Is that stretched-out Brazil accurate? Or that shrunk China? Pretty sure a lot of areas of this map aren't very accurate.
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