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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

#21

Post by ludwigschubert »

usaphp wrote: post #18
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

I get what you're saying, and you are right, of course.

I'm trying to think of this not from a prescriptive position, though, but thinking of "why do people like Mercator". And I believe that people like the perceived efficiency of Mercator, in the sense that you can make a world map that fills more of its area with land mass.

Or, addressing your comment more pointedly: yes, yes you can. You can ignore the Pacific Ocean on a world map most of the time. :D

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

#22

Post by win_ini »

Grue3 wrote: post #20
supergreg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think it may be your bias based on your entire lifetime of looking at Mercator projections? The purpose of this project is to make it an accurate representation. The observations you make are precisely why this made was made.

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

#23

Post by ludwigschubert »

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."

That's a good point.

I guess I am trying to say that a map that accurately represents the area of seas is potentially not what everyday map users want from a world map.

But I see that they optimized for that instead of my vague sense of usability. :-)

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

#24

Post by win_ini »

usaphp wrote: post #18
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

Actually humans can do that. We orient ourselves using landmarks. If you look at theme park maps, ski resort maps, maps of tourist areas downtown produced by local organizations, subway maps....

All of them are wildly inaccurate in terms of proportions and distances. But notice - almost all are oriented to people not very familiar with that area. Certain big monuments may be left out (the highway that runs by water park, the big electric station across the street etc.

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

#25

Post by jimueller »

usaphp wrote: post #18
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

A decorative toy map like this doesn't have to be accurate. Yes, you can ignore things for convenience. If I make a map that ignores the Pacific so I can focus on landmasses, it doesn't make the actual Pacific disappear. So yes, you can absolutely ignore things you don't want.

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

#27

Post by colordrops »

win_ini wrote: post #22
Grue3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think it may be your bias based on your entire lifetime of looking at Mercator projections? The purpose of this project is to make it an accurate representation. The observations you make are precisely why this made was made.

This was made to keep areas proportional to reality but the shapes are clearly distorted.

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

#28

Post by logicallee »

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…

>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.

Totally agreed!!! To say nothing about totally irrelevant places like Africa.

I've written up some of the other advantages of the Mercator projection that you've missed, here:

http://imgur.com/a/bsRD9

In short, it's the best and most useful design and nobody other than maaaaaybe some planetary geologist should possibly concern themselves with something as irrelevant as objective reality.

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

#29

Post by ryandrake »

GavinMcG wrote: post #16

> "AuthaGraph... faithfully represents all oceans and continents" What does this mean? Literally, that is impossible, so what's it actually preserving and distorting? It looks like angle is distorted. Is that it?

It looks like this is just another "equal area" projection. Many of these exist. Map projections are design to minimize certain distortions but at the expense of additional other distortions. Obviously since the world is round, you cannot minimize all of them. Other examples of distortions that a projection can aim to minimize are: distance, direction, scale, angle.

An example of another existing equal area projection is the Mollweide projection: [1] which you may have seen before.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollweide_projection

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