It might be a good design work, but why does half of Sahalin island and Kuril islands which are the territories owned by Russia are marked as Japanese here. I wonder if this work would win the prize if those territories disputed only by Japan would be marked as Russian.
A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#82Okaaay... I find this map is a terrible design in several obvious ways (obvious as hurting my eyes in a matter of seconds). * Blue colour for lands. No comment... * Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans. * Then the remaining of the central space is occupied by the largest countries: very little information there. * The most interesting parts, i.e. where there are plenty…
> Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans
This is a silly argument. Maybe I find your region "boring" and "useless".
- A Fijian.
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#83Okaaay... I find this map is a terrible design in several obvious ways (obvious as hurting my eyes in a matter of seconds). * Blue colour for lands. No comment... * Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans. * Then the remaining of the central space is occupied by the largest countries: very little information there. * The most interesting parts, i.e. where there are plenty…
Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans. Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean. This map cleverly is centered on Japan, the country that awarded the design. It appears to be fairly well proportioned and to not weirdly distort land masses that are typically wildly distorted, such as Greenland and Antarctica.
> Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean
That doesn't mean the ocean has to be given prominence on a map, the same way documentaries are not dominated by silent wide shots "because most of the time nothing interesting is happening".
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for the fact that it tessellates so all you need to do is make the map a bit bigger and that distortion goes away (seen in [0]). 0. http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/autha...
A map shouldn't need an infinite series of other maps to be useful.
You're looking for a map where a straightish line gives you the direct path between two points? That's completely impossible. Flying from LA to Tokyo will take you over Alaska. Try to work that one out on a map.
(Yeah, you can make a map where straight lines work, but only for a chosen point of origin or antipodes around that point.)
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
A map shouldn't need an infinite series of other maps to be useful.
You're looking for a map where a straightish line gives you the direct path between two points? That's completely impossible. Flying from LA to Tokyo will take you over Alaska. Try to work that one out on a map. (Yeah, you can make a map where straight lines work, but only for a chosen point of origin or antipodes around that point.)
Then why are you labeling it "completely impossible"? Here's a perfectly sensible straightish-line path between LAX and NRT, using a polar-aspect orthographic projection:
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#86The Good Design Award is pretty neat. Years ago when I lived in Japan I bought a mechanical pencil[0] that I absolutely loved. After more than a decade of use, I googled the pencil name and found that it had won a Good Design award. I thought it was great that a sub-$10 pencil could win something like that. [0] http://ameblo.jp/staedler-rotring/entry-11510382804.html
What was so special about it?
I've asked myself that a few times. If you're happy just using a pencil and don't really care about the details, I totally get that; I've got lots of other pencils that work just fine.
Here are the things I like about this one: 1) It has a grip that's not super rubbery and thus doesn't attract lint. It's very firm. Yet it still provides enough friction to act as a grip. 2) It has a retractable tip with a very satisfying deep "clack" or "clock" sound when you extend the pipe. You carry this in your pocket with no worries about lint on the grip or jabbing yourself. 3) The metal parts are not chromed, but have a matte finish. The matte look really makes it look professional, not as cheap. 4) The eraser cap seems to have a clever anti-choking mechanism in case a child swallows it. 5) The muted colors (I have the desaturated blue one) are really pleasant to the eye. There's a very slight sparkle to the finish. 6) There is no give--the tolerances are right on. No parts jiggling around when you operate the clutch mechanism, etc. 7) I'm a designer, and feel that the ratios and overall organic vs. inorganic breakdown of the physical design are right on. It's easy to sit down and draw a pencil tip that is really ugly; developing just the right ratio and curvature that make it look graceful is not nearly as easy. 8) The balance in the hand is great.
You can find these _individual_ elements in other pencils, but they're all there together in this model, so it's a really nice experience.
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#87The Good Design Award is pretty neat. Years ago when I lived in Japan I bought a mechanical pencil[0] that I absolutely loved. After more than a decade of use, I googled the pencil name and found that it had won a Good Design award. I thought it was great that a sub-$10 pencil could win something like that. [0] http://ameblo.jp/staedler-rotring/entry-11510382804.html
Wow I received this exact pencil two years ago for Christmas and I've used it nearly every day since it was gifted to me. In fact I just put it down to type this. I am not surprised at all that it has won a design award. I was the type of person to misplace pencils like socks out of the laundry, but I treat this pencil as a companion.
That's awesome, I didn't expect to hear from someone else who owned one.
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#88While 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. ...which would be indeed useful if your country and its neighbors are on the opposite side of the Earth from the Pacific. If your country and most of its important trade partners are sitting right around the Pacific, the "strength" is now shortcoming. Frankly, I…
I live in Australia, and having a map that centres on the Pacific so that Chile is in relation to us... is not very useful. Our political, social, cultural, and economic ties have very little to do with South America. The Pacific Ocean almost literally takes up half the planet. A general-purpose map can benefit from diminishing its importance (after all, are the seas ever any other colour than a simple plain light blue on these?). The benefit of a Euro/Afrocentric map is that the split goes down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and there's only a couple of countries there, whose tiny islands are rarely shown on maps anyway.
This equal-area map dramatically distorts the shapes of the landmasses, and they're the very thing the map is there to show. Brazil is pregnant; Australia has a tumour; China is smaller than Australia, instead of being 25% larger; Saudi Arabia is as big as India; so on and so forth. The projection lines on the map do not match up with how humans see things - this is not a map for humans to use, since the only way to make sense of it in a practical way is to interpret it with a tool.
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#89Earlier 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.
They're accurate insofar as they match up correctly with the map's own grid lines (which are also horribly distorted to our eyes)
Re: A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award
#90If you want to dynamically see how projection affects shapes, check out the Mercator Puzzle Redux (the original seems to have bitrotted). The object of the puzzle is to match the countries to their real locations, and it demonstrates the distortions as you drag the countries around.