Month: April 2025

Preserving the Maps of Karen Wynn Fonstad

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Wisconsin Public Radio takes up the story of fantasy cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad (1945–2005), best known for her Atlas of Middle Earth and other fantasy-world atlases. “Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son—both geographers themselves—have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them.” Her son spent his spring break week getting as many of her maps as possible scanned at the Robinson Map Library, a task he described as barely scratching the surface.

This follows her belated obituary in the New York Times earlier this year (previously): she may be, finally, having a posthumous moment.

Daniel Huffman’s Asymmetric Monstrosity

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Daniel Huffman’s map of the world using his 'asymmetric monstrosity' composite map projection.
Daniel Huffman

Foreshadowed on Mastodon in January, the horror that Daniel Huffman has created is now upon us. Behold the Asymmetric Monstrosity projection, an equal-area—yes! every part of it—projection that grafts together pieces of the Equal Earth, cylindrical equal-area, three pieces of Mollweide and five sinusoidals (each on different central meridians) into a patchwork atrocity with an uneven graticule and interrupted labels. Stop twitching long enough to read Daniel’s explanation as to why this was perpetrated:

First off, it was fun and interesting for me to think about how projections can be glued together. This map is a Frankenstein’s Monster–like creation, but it doesn’t leave anything out, nor does it have mismatches at the joints. Landmasses fit together seamlessly at the boundaries of any given transition zone between projections, because with a little math and the right tools, you can make two projections (of the right variety) match each other at a given location.

The other goal is to educate, through entertainment. It looks funny, thus drawing attention; and in doing so I hope it will jar people into realizing how distorted all projections are. This projection is just as valid as any other, in terms of how faithfully it represents the earth. It’s equal-area, showing everything in proper size proportion. It has interruptions, sure, but so do many others. It is a composite, yes, but so are other projections.

I think it’s in the same vein as those “south-up” world maps that you can buy, or ones centered on the Pacific. Many audiences would find them unfamiliar, but the maps use their uniqueness to make people realize that there’s really no right way to portray the world, and that our conventions are frequently arbitrary.

It’s available for free download at pretty high resolution, or you can buy it as a print, and while Daniel doesn’t actually expect anyone to do it, honestly, why not?

If You Thought There Would Be Nothing More to Report About the ‘Gulf of America’ Nonsense, You Were Mistaken

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

This “Gulf of America” business has spread to the state level, and where else would it start but Florida, where two state house bills that would purge “Gulf of Mexico” from state laws and educational materials have now passed the Senate and await Governor DeSantis’s inevitable signature.

In February the White House barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for failing to use “Gulf of America” in their reporting. On Tuesday a federal judge ordered the Trump White House to lift those restrictions; the White House is now appealing the order.

The public editor for the Dallas Morning News explains why the newspaper continues to use “Gulf of Mexico”: “So, was using ‘Gulf of Mexico’ an editorial lapse or an act of courage? It was neither. It instead reflected a thoughtful, fair-minded decision driven by a pragmatism we typically refer to as common sense.”

Purple Lizard Maps (previously) says they will soon launch a Kickstarter to make a map than honours the history and name of the Gulf of Mexico. “We plan to make a unique, thought-provoking and beautiful map of the Gulf of Mexico. One that highlights 10,000 years of cultural, political and environmental history in this region. This will be a historical record, a piece of art, and a stand against cultural erasure.”

Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance; A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup; ‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials.

Maps and Games Roundup

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The GeoFacts Challenge is calling for games that teach geography.

How many of us only know where Winnipeg is because we played Ticket to Ride, or Kinshasa because of Pandemic, or Kamchatka because of Risk? None of these games are educational in nature, per se, and yet for many gamers, they have been more effective teachers of geography than a textbook.

Your goal for the GeoFacts Challenge is to design a game with memorable geographical information, whether it be countries or capitals, volcanoes or valleys, or annual caribou migration corridors. The game should use modern mechanics and a printed map with real location names. Both the map and the geographical information should be integrated into game play, but this contest is about fun—don’t disguise homework assignments as games! […]

Examples of strategic games that use a well-integrated map with memorable locations: Twilight Struggle, Sun Tzu (2005), Italian Rails, Axis and Allies, Pandemic, Risk, Terraforming Mars, the Ticket to Ride series, and certain cases in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. While most of these games use a map of the world or a map of a specific country, contestants are not limited to maps of this nature.

(Thanks to Alan for the tip.)

Meanwhile, the Map Making Mega Bundle collects the game mapmaking app Campaign Cartographer 3+ with a number of its add-ons, plugins and resources at a discounted price, a portion of which goes to charity. Despite the fact that it is in many ways adjunct to fantasy mapmaking, which is one of the areas of my expertise, I am woefully under-informed about roleplaying or computer game mapping, but CC3+ seems to come up a lot.

New York City Subway Map Gets a Complete Makeover

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Photo: MTA Chair & CEO Janno Lieber, NYCT President Demetrius Crichlow, and Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara unveil a major redesign to the New York City Subway Map at Times Sq-42 St on Wednesday, Apr 2, 2025.
Marc A. Hermann/MTA. CC licence.

New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has announced the first major redesign of its system map since 1979. The new map adopts a diagrammatic style, in common with most other transit maps around the world, for the first time since Massimo Vignelli’s controversial (and ultimately abandoned) 1972 map. Indeed, the MTA is openly acknowledging the influence of Vignelli’s design, along with the colours from the replacement maps designed by Michael Hertz.

The new map was designed by the MTA’s Creative Services Mapping Department and, like many major subway systems around the world, utilizes a diagrammatic style, employing bold, straight lines making it much easier for the eye to follow and more suitable for digital users. The white background, bold colors, horizontal writing and use of black dots make the map more ADA-friendly and easier for people with low-vision or cognitive disabilities to read.

Designers also focused on text legibility, keeping text on one line wherever possible and making better use of open space to alleviate crowding and using a black subway bullet with a white character to provide maximum contrast for easier reading.

A complete New York City Subway map from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
MTA

This isn’t a complete surprise: the MTA started testing a map similar to this one in a few stations back in 2021.

I’ll be very interested to see how this new map will be received. The design of the New York subway map has been contentious for as long as I’ve been alive. Will it continue to be?

Apple Maps Adds Indigenous Lands and Place Names to Australia and New Zealand

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Apple announced last week that Apple Maps will now display Indigenous lands, place names and other content in Australia and New Zealand.

Beginning today, Apple Maps now displays Indigenous lands in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. By gathering information from Indigenous advisors, cartographers, Traditional Owners, language holders, and community members, Apple Maps will show reserves and Indigenous Protected Areas, Indigenous place names, Traditional Country, and dual-language labels. Indigenous lands place cards feature information about the local area and Traditional Owners, and can be curated to allow communities to add their own photos, destinations on their land, and text in their own language. Representation of Indigenous lands in Apple Maps provides users with a more comprehensive experience while also recognising the stories and significance behind them.

More at the Guardian. This follows Apple’s move to show Indigenous lands in Canada and the U.S. in 2023. [Lat × Long]

Seafloor Features Mapped by Satellite

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A map of the world showing the vertical gravity gradient on the ocean floor. The gradient is used to model seafloor topography. NASA Earth Observatory/SWOT.
NASA Earth Observatory (Michala Garrison/SWOT data)

“Mapping the seafloor isn’t the SWOT mission’s primary purpose,” says the JPL, and yet the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite is being used for more than measuring sea surface height: those ocean surface topography measurements can be used to infer features on the seafloor. NASA Earth Observatory:

Because geologic features like seamounts and abyssal hills have more mass than their surroundings, they exert a slightly stronger gravitational pull that creates small, measurable bumps in the sea surface above them. These subtle gravity signatures help researchers predict the kind of seafloor feature that produced them.

[…] Through repeated observations, the satellite is sensitive enough to pick up these minute differences, with centimeter-level accuracy, in sea surface height caused by the features below. David Sandwell, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and his colleagues used a year’s worth of SWOT data to focus on seamounts, abyssal hills, and underwater continental margins, where continental crust meets oceanic crust.

[…] Areas of decreased gravity (purple) are affiliated with depressions on the seafloor, while areas of increased gravity (green) indicate the locations of more massive, elevated features.

Only about a quarter of the seafloor has been mapped with traditional sonar methods, so you can see how a gap is being filled here. Next up is calculating the depth of the features being detected through this method.