Speaking of end-of-year lists, here’s the 2022 edition of Kenneth Field’s favourite maps of the past year, which he’s been doing for the last decade or so. As usual, there’s a lot of range here.
Previously: Maps at Year’s End.
Category: Cartography
Will Using Fuller’s Projection Get You in Trouble?
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map: is the projection it uses patented, trademarked or copyrighted to the extent that you have to pay a licencing fee or face a lawsuit? Daniel Huffman digs into this very question, which apparently has been circulating around the cartographic world for some time. “Here’s the summary of what I’ve concluded: if you don’t pay a license fee before you publish a map that uses the Fuller projection, you may find yourself hearing from the projection’s ‘owner.’ At the same time, I don’t think that the owner (the Buckminster Fuller Institute) has any rights that would actually hold up in court.”
What Do You Mean, Three Norths?
The Ordnance Survey is making a small deal over a so-called “triple alignment” of true north, magnetic north and grid north early this month: “the historic triple alignment will make landfall at the little village of Langton Matravers just west of Swanage in early November and will stay converged on Great Britain for three and a half years as it slowly travels up the country.”
Now, grid north is an artifact of a map projection’s grid lines. On a map grid there’s always some difference between true north and grid north except along the central meridian, which in Ordnance Survey maps is two degrees west of Greenwich. The further away from that central meridian, the greater the difference.
What the Ordnance Survey is hyping is that magnetic north, which is constantly shifting, has moved to a point where magnetic declination (the difference between true north and magnetic north) is zero along that central meridian. Kind of neat—if you’re using an Ordnance Survey map. Because this particular triple alignment only exists for Ordnance Survey maps. It’s all a bit anglocentric, really (especially the bit in the video that describes true north as “the line which runs through Britain to the North Pole”).
From Analemma to Zodiac: Bellerby’s Glossary of Globe Terminology
Globemaker Bellerby & Co. has posted a glossary of globe terminology that covers more general geographical terms and concepts (equator, hemisphere) as well as things that are mainly found on globes, covering the various mount types, to common features like time dials and analemmas, to calottes (which are the little circles that cover the poles, where the gore points meet; oddly enough “gore” doesn’t get its own listing).
McPhee’s Maps of Alberta and Saskatchewan
Alex McPhee’s ridiculously detailed map of Alberta, which included things like the area burned in the 2016 Fort McMurray fire and the province’s Hutterite colonies, came out in print form—specifically, in the form of a 42″×68″ wall map—last year. Now he’s done it again: a similarly detailed 36″×66″ wall map of his home province of Saskatchewan, which he’s just sent to the printer. Each map starts at $60.
Mercator: Extreme
To follow-up on xkcd’s Madagascator cartoon (previously), I missed the fact that clicking on the cartoon at the xkcd website actually did something, but Keir caught it: it links to Drew Roos’s Mercator: Extreme, an online tool that allows you to have some fun with the Mercator projection’s excessive polar distortion by making any point on the planet the North Pole and which clearly served as Randall’s inspiration.
The Design Choices Behind Maps of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
In Geographical magazine, Doug Specht and Alexander Kent examine some of the design choices made by media organizations mapping the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Cartographic design choices over colour, layout, lettering and symbology, for example, all influence our attitudes and feelings towards the war in Ukraine. […] [B]y understanding how these choices (e.g., regarding the selection and classification of features as well as their colour and symbology) mask the nuances of reality, we can be better at reading the stories they are trying to tell.”
Relatedly, in a Twitter thread, Le Monde’s cartographic team explores the decisions behind one of their print maps (in French).
Previously: How Maps of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Can Mislead; Mapping the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Roundup #3.
Favourite Maps and Data Visualizations from 2021
The Ordnance Survey’s GeoDataViz team looks back at their favourite maps and data visualizations from 2021. A very wide-ranging collection, some of which are downright quirky.
Fraser Taylor Appointed to the Order of Canada
Among the 135 appointees to the Order of Canada last month was Carleton University professor Fraser Taylor, the director of Carleton’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, and coiner of the concept of “cybercartography.” See the Carleton press release.
Map Projection Explorer
Stefan Reifenberg’s Map Projection Explorer is another interactive tool that morphs a world map into the projection of your choice. The availability of data from the d3.js library seems to be enabling a lot of them. [r/Maps]
Previously: Map Projection Playground; Comparing Map Projections.
The Spilhaus Projection for Designers
The Spilhaus projection has been available to ArcGIS Pro users for nearly two years. Now, to expand the Spilhaus’s availability beyond ArcGIS users, John Nelson provides vector assets suitable for designers working in, say, Illustrator.
Previously: The Spilhaus Projection Comes to ArcGIS Pro; Everything’s Coming Up Spilhaus; About the Spilhaus Projection.
Natural Resources Canada Releases Updated World Map
Canada’s federal Department of Natural Resources has released a new wall map of the world, its first since 2005, under an open government licence.
The World is a general reference political map focused on the names and international boundaries of sovereign and non-sovereign countries. The information is portrayed using the Winkel II projection at a scale of 1:29 000 000. The dataset includes international boundaries, populated places, and labelled major hydrographic and physical features.
Because it’s produced by a federal department, the map and the download page are at pains to emphasize that the boundaries, labels and other information is not necessarily representative of the Government of Canada’s position (viz., Persian Gulf and Sea of Japan; disputed boundaries are included, frozen conflicts not so much).
CaGIS Map Design Competition
Submissions to the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS)’s annual map competition, which consists of both student and professional categories, are due by 31 January 2022. (Here’s a list of last year’s winners and honourable mentions, and a gallery of some of their work. Previous years are also available.) [CCA]
Thirty Day Map Challenge
The Thirty Day Map Challenge is taking place right now on Twitter: see the #30DayMapChallenge hashtag. For the second year in a row, mapmakers are challenged to make a map based on the day’s theme. (Today’s, for example, was to map with a new tool.) It’s open to everyone; for more information and resources see the challenge’s GitHub page. Here’s the page for the 2020 challenge, which saw 7,000 maps from 1,000 contributors.
Atlas of the Invisible
Atlas of the Invisible, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s collection of new maps and visualizations based on “enormous” datasets, is out today in the United States from W. W. Norton. (The British edition, published by Particular Books, came out in September.)
The Royal Geographic Society reprints a map from the book showing the flow of ice on the Greenland ice cap and interviews James about how they used the data. James has also published some education resources related to the book on his website. And of course there’s more at the book’s website.
See John Grimwade’s post about the book, in which he asks the authors about their ideas and process. Also see reviews from Fast Company and the Guardian.
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
Previously: Where the Animals Go.
Related: Map Books of 2021.