Category: Cartography

The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: Another Follow-Up

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Commentary on map projections continues in the wake of the UN resolution about replacing the Mercator projection with Equal Earth. There were two pieces in the Guardian last week. This one is less about projections but about why they matter, not just in terms of diminishing Africa, but also in terms of exaggerating Greenland: would Trump have been so obsessed with it if it if it wasn’t 14 times too big on the Mercator? This piece interviews the three creators of the Equal Earth projection—it’s understandably been a busy time for them!—and provides a bit more background to those just tuning in.

My impression is that the last main redoubt of Mercator is in web maps, where the projection is not a problem unless you zoom out too much. I’ve spotted a couple of new tools to address that: see Ben Joffe’s interactive map, and MapTiler’s demo. Both deal with distortion at the map’s edges by allowing you to drag the map so that any degree of longitude can be at the centre, and transitioning to Mercator as you zoom in.

Previously: The UN Is Voting on Whether to Phase Out the Mercator Projection; The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: A Follow-Up.

The United Nations, Mercator and Equal Earth: A Follow-Up

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Matthew Edney’s response to last week’s UN resolution on phasing out the Mercator projection in favour of Equal Earth: “This event and the responses to it show that we are still being haunted by Arno Peters’ damnable arguments. They were cursed when Peters publicized them, about fifty years ago, and they seem doomed to torment us even now.” See also André Ourednik’s take (in French), which points out the biases and editorial choices even in Equal Earth.

The transcript of the General Assembly debate on the resolution shows that Ukraine abstained from the vote because the Equal Earth map shows Crimea as disputed territory (which is a point about the default map, not the projection), and the United States felt the resolution trivialized the institution (which the U.S. would never do) and dismissed it as part of a “radical ideological project.”

Update: Japan’s mad about how Equal Earth depicts the Kuril Islands. Can no one understand the difference between a projection and the default map using it?

The UN Is Voting on Whether to Phase Out the Mercator Projection

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Correct the Map campaign (previously) has come to the United Nations. The Guardian:

The UN general assembly will vote on Friday on a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size.

Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister, said the resolution was sponsored by Togo and backed by countries including the African Union’s 54 other member states. He did not specify the total number. […]

UN resolutions are non-enforceable but if the vote passes, it could lead to an update of classroom curriculums and everyday technology, given the wide usage of the Mercator projection in education, technology and governance.

I’m still confused about the so-called “wide usage” of the Mercator projection, given that I see so little of it myself—even Apple and Google zoom out to a globe if you have reasonably new hardware and in the latter case have globe view checked—that when I do see it (usually choropleth maps embedded on web pages) I’m kind of shocked. But I’m Western and English-speaking, I have up-to-date tech and I know where to find the good maps, and I haven’t been in a classroom in decades; I can’t rule out that Mercator is still turning up where I don’t see it.

Previously: In Case You Thought the War Against the Mercator Projection Was Over Long Ago.

Update: The resolution passed 164 to 1 with 6 absentions. The U.S. was the only country to vote against—I can’t imagine why.

Who Are the Gatekeepers in Cartography?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Antonio Antoine also has something to say about generative AI in cartography. As I did in my piece about generative AI, he takes as his starting point the question of gatekeeping; unlike me, he’s coming at it as a working mapmaker. He takes the question at face value: who and where are the gatekeepers in cartography—for example, access to data, education, software licences—and asks what (if anything) generative AI can do about it. In the end he comes down on the side of accountability: “If one is not trained in geography/cartography, where does accountability step in to correct bad maps? Are formal cartographers supposed to police the internet? Like gatekeepers? Why not nip it in the bud at the source? […] As far as I am concerned, genAI in cartography is a race to the bottom. There will be little to no accountability in these maps as there is very little ownership in them.”

Alice Hudson and Women in Cartography

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Alice Hudson, chief of the New York Public Library’s map division from 1981 to 2009, died in 2024. Last month The Cartographic Journal published a long look at Hudson’s life and career, written by Daniel Anger and Elizabeth Baigent. It was done as part of a special Cartographic Journal issue on women in cartography, which grew out of a 2021 conference on the subject. The issue does not yet have a single page I can point you at, but until it does you can see the contents via the latest articles page. A few articles are free/open access, including the editorial preface, a look at two map librarians at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an article about the 19th-century mapmaker Selina Hall, and an editorial refuting the notion that women didn’t do cartography.

‘The Map Itself Should Be Messier’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In an interview in the Spring 2026 issue of The World Today, William Rankin, author of Radical Cartography, looks at cartography in the present geopolitical situation and argues that maps need to be up to the challenge of today’s complications: “[M]ainstream cartographic conventions are often inadequate to show a complexity we do understand; and there are situations where we cannot say with confidence where we would put the lines even if we tried. The map itself should be messier. It should raise questions of ambiguity and multiple claims, rather than presenting a simplified version and then walking it back in a footnote.”

Imaginary Maps as Cartographic Guides

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Bodleian Map Room Blog looks at a specific kind of map of imaginary places, “designed to be a guide to cartographers by showing how to portray certain features, or for the map reader to show what the symbols mean.”

Here’s an example, ‘Colours and symbols used on fair sheets and fair tracing’, issued by the Hydrographic Office of the Navy in 1973. Fair here meaning a document after correction, ready to be used. But is it fair? With this ‘made-up’ map the Hydrographic Office have used real names but in random locations, so Campania, in reality a region of Italy, features, as does the English county of Rutland (though as a town here) and a made-up mountain, Montrosia. Best of all is mention of “Approaches to Valhalla”. The map shows different forms of landscape, both natural and man-made with the symbols used to show those features, and the names are added to give the whole an authentic feel.

It makes sense to do it this way: no single real map is likely to contain every single feature you’re trying to demonstrate.

Pinhead Map Icons

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A screenshot from the Pinhead Map Icons page showing every single icon at a very very small size.
Pinhead Map Icons

Quincy Morgan has released Pinhead Map Icons: “So you’re making a map and need some icons. Well, maybe a lot of icons. Like, for anything that might appear on a map. And they need to be visually consistent. Like the size and direction and whatever. And they gotta be free. Even public domain. In vector format. With no AI. Oh, and they all need to be legible on the head of a pin.” 1,045 icons and counting, in SVG format.

The Cold War Seen Through Polar Projections

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

On The Conversation, James Cheshire looks at the Cold War-era maps that news magazines commissioned to explain the geopolitical situation to their readers. “Their maps were large, dramatic and designed to be spread across kitchen tables and classroom desks. And they also offered a very different perspective to the mainstream maps we have become accustomed to today.” Which is to say: polar projections were front and centre.

Greenland, the Mercator, and You-Know-Who

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Somebody’s been talking about Greenland again, and we’re getting another flurry of articles about how Greenland’s apparent size on maps may be to blame for the obsession. Last year it was suggested that Trump wanted Greenland simply because it looked really big on the Mercator projection: Slate and Newsweek were a lot less circumspect about it than Foreign Policy was, but then they would be. The latest round of press appears to be equally circumspect. The Financial Times and Geographical magazine turn evidence of executive ignorance into some kind of teachable moment about map projections instead of saying outright: he thinks it’s bigger than it actually is, and that’s nuts. Providing some context is always good, but let’s try not to bury the lede.

Most people know the poles are exaggerated on the Mercator projection. They’ve seen other projections. In Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, Mark Monmonier pushed back against the argument that map projections distort our understanding of geography: “Do they never look at a globe, or at other maps? Are map users complete idiots?”1 It was a rhetorical question: of course they aren’t, he was saying. Apparently there’s an exception. But when the emperor has no clothes, you have to proceed as though most people run around naked.

Previously: Trump’s ‘Cartographic Compulsion’.

A Book Roundup

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book covers for Free the Map, Radical Cartography and Secret Maps.

In a Guardian piece last month, Laura Spinney briefly touches on three books and the ways in which they subvert our understanding of what’s on the map and how we use them to see the world. They are Free the Map: From Atlas to Hermes: a New Cartography of Borders and Migration by Henk van Houtum et al. (nai10, 2024); William Rankin’s Radical Cartography (Picador/Viking, 2025); and Secret Maps, the book accompanying the exhibition of the same name (British Library/University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Doug Greenfield catches up with the 50 Maps series from Belt Publishing, focusing mainly on the two most recent: Cincinnati in 50 Maps by Nick Swartsell and maps by Andy Woodruff, and Columbus in 50 Maps by Brent Warren and maps by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. (Previously.)

Cincinnati in 50 Maps is one of two books—the other is Alan Wight’s Cincinnati’s Foodshed: An Art Atlas—that are the subject of a 23-minute segment on WVXU’s Cincinnati Edition this week, which interviews the authors.

‘Three Norths’ Leave England

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Ordnance Survey has announced that the triple alignment of true north, grid north (on OS maps) and magnetic north—the so-called three norths—has left England and is now over the North Sea. It’ll make landfall again in Scotland late next year. This is an artifact of, and specific to, Ordnance Survey maps, whose grid has a meridian is two degrees west longitude, east and west of which there is some difference between true north and grid north, and the movement of the north magnetic pole. In other words, the third north is product-specific. The triple alignment has been working its way north for the past three years; see my previous post for more.

A History of Swiss Cartography

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book cover: Engineers of Map Art

Engineers of Map Art, a book on the history of Swiss cartography that focuses on work done at ETH Zurich, came out in English last September. (The German edition, Ingenieure der Kartenkunst, came out last January.) “This publication provides a comprehensive overview of 170 years of cartography at ETH Zurich and pays tribute to the personalities who have contributed to the development of the discipline. It is published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation and highlights its contribution to science and practice.” Eduard Imhof is covered in chapter 4. It’s available for free download as an open-access PDF; a hard copy can be ordered for CHF 50. Thanks to Peter Wrobel for the tip.

Ethics in Cartography

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Nat Case writes about the ethics of cartography in Psyche:

You might think there’s not a lot to get moralistic about in the world of mapping. You would be wrong. For decades now, various critiques have been raised about cartography, its history, its current practice, its complicity in the evils of the world, and cartographers’ degree of responsibility. On the one hand, cartographic history in the West is bound up with institutions that created maps to prosecute war, subjugate colonies, extract wealth from the earth regardless of who was already living there, and manage mass social engineering including a large-scale oppression. Maps can also be tools that create individual agency by giving any map-reader a manager’s view of the world. That part tends to be noncontroversial. It’s who we work for and with that causes some people to raise concerns.

[Alberto Cairo]

How Maps Lie

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last week Andrew Middleton (he of The Map Center) gave a presentation at the Dickinson Memorial Library in Northfield, Massachusetts. Titled “How Maps Lie,” it’s the kind of introductory talk that can never be done too much: about what maps actually do, and the distance that can exist between the map and the territory. The video is an archived livestream; the talk itself stars about 15 minutes in.