Harry Kuril built a computer model to identify the places with a best chance to catch a glimpse of the aurora borealis during a short visit, assigning scores based on aurora intensity, cloud cover and light pollution data. The above map is the result. [Maps.com]
Damien Saunder’s book about maps on record covers, Maps on Vinyl, got a writeup in the Guardian last week.
Some designs address global social or environmental issues. Others map the mind, imaginary places, feelings, worldviews—or, in the case of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s The Equatorial Stars, deep space.
Among Saunder’s personal favourites is a sleeve from the long-gone Iowa alt rock band House of Large Sizes, showing a cake whose icing is decorated with a map, with a chunk missing. “It’s a commentary on how we’re consuming the world piece by piece, almost without noticing,” says Saunder.
Another favourite cover comes from Belgian punk band Hetze: an illustration of a globe dangling by a thread from the forefinger of an elegant, long-nailed hand, by tattoo artist Florence Roman.
Previously: Maps on Vinyl.
My hosting provider has announced that it will be retiring the announcement list feature on which The Map Room relies for its weekly email digest. Which means that at some point in the near future it will need to find a new home.
The best option, from a features and privacy standpoint, is probably Buttondown (which I already use for my personal newsletter). But adding The Map Room and its subscribers to my account will move me up the paid plan ladder, so this switch will cost me a bit (insert subtle reminder here that the Patreon exists). I don’t begrudge doing so: my email subscribers are an active and significant part of my audience (to the point where I sometimes wonder whether I should go email-first) so it’s worth doing that aspect of The Map Room properly. And I’ve been eyeing a move to Buttondown in any event; my hosting provider is just making it happen sooner rather than later.
Because email subscribers have properly opted in to the existing service, I can move subscriptions over seamlessly when the time comes. I’ll try to give a heads-up before that happens, though.
In this video, Paul Whitewick explores the strange case of Elkhams Grave, a name on the map that would normally refer to an old crossroad grave site—only it appears to be nowhere near a crossroad, parish boundary or other burial ground. It’s a place name with no apparent surviving evidence of the place named.
Before joining Esri, Lauren Tierney spent a number of years making maps for the Washington Post. In this interview with Maps.com editor-in-chief Robby Deming she talks about her experiences making maps in the newsroom and the role of maps in journalism.
Map Men Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones visit the Ordnance Survey in a (sponsored) set of two (vertically aligned short) videos: part one, part two. Complete with map-folding mishaps, gratuitous hi-viz vest wearing, and a Google Maps dig.
Meanwhile, they’ve also gone and written a book: This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters) will be out from HarperCollins imprints in the fall of 2025: the U.K. edition will come out from Mudlark in October (£17) and the U.S. edition from Hanover Square Press in November ($30). Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
The Leventhal Center has posted a statement on the future of the Allmaps project—Allmaps is a georeferencing tool for digital images—now that its Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the NEH has been terminated, like so many other NEH grants. “Although we’re disappointed that the U.S. government is backing away from supporting projects like Allmaps, LMEC and AGSL will keep working to support the Allmaps project (and we’re thankful that it has support from European agencies).”
Citing cybersecurity concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense is cutting off NOAA and NASA access to data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), throwing a wrench into the NOAA’s ability to forecast hurricanes, CNN reports. Of particular concern is the loss of access to the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS). CNN explains:
This tool is like a 3D X-ray of tropical storms and hurricanes, revealing where the strongest rain bands and winds are likely to be and how they are shifting.
Such imagery provides forecasters with information about a storm’s inner structure and is one of the limited ways they can discern how quickly and significantly a storm’s intensity is changing, particularly at night and during periods when hurricane hunter aircraft are not flying in the storm.
It does not appear that the agencies were given notice of this move. They managed to negotiate a one-month extension, to July 31. NOAA says it can use other sources for its hurricane forecasts.
Gareth Fuller’s latest creation is “The DMV,” a pictorial map of Washington, D.C., and the neighbouring bits of Maryland and Virginia (hence “DMV”).
Created over twelve months, including three months of on-the-ground exploration in 2023 and creation in 2024, this artwork becomes the fourth capital city within the ongoing series, Purposeful Wanderings. The third time capturing an entire region on canvas. And the very first artwork depicting the United States of America.
From its very beginning, Washington, D.C. has sat at the centre of American national identity, politics, conflict, compromise, and power. But it doesn’t work alone: it’s the wider region that sustains the Capital. The DMV—D.C., Maryland, and Virginia—isn’t just a geographic label; it’s a cultural badge, a collective effort shaped by the reach of the Metro, the sprawl of the Beltway, and the unique, fluid neighbourhoods that define its borders. These observations have guided my exploration; the drawings seek to uncover what binds The DMV together and creates its unshakable sense of place.
As with Fuller’s previous works, prints are available at several price points.
I missed the previous installment of Fuller’s Purposeful Wanderings series, “Shanghai,” which came out in 2022.
It’s been more than 18 years since Steve Jobs demonstrated Google Maps on the then-prototype iPhone, and it’s hard to wrap one’s head around how transformational the fact that every mobile phone comes with a detailed, always up-to-date map of the world. James Killick makes the point in the final installment of his “12 Map Happenings that Rocked Our World”:
Well today there are estimated to be 7.2 billion smartphones in use around the planet. They are used by 4.7 billion people.2 That’s about 58% of the world’s population.
And every one of those devices has access to a maps app. And every maps app has a map of the planet.
So, if you boil it all down: at least one out of every two people on the planet now has a detailed map of the whole world in their pocket.
Process that thought. Before smartphones with data plans, car navigation meant GPS receivers with onboard maps that needed to be manually updated, often for a fee, or they’d slowly go out of date. And before that? Well, discussion of that (example 1, example 2) is a good way to make people feel old on the Internet. It meant a needing to own collection of paper maps. It meant knowing how to navigate from a map, which ain’t nothing—and was never universal. It meant asking for directions if you didn’t, or if you didn’t have the map you needed.
“A GPS in every pocket is one of the few truly great things about the smartphone age,” wrote Jeff Veillette on Bluesky, and I’m hard pressed to disagree. It will be harder for half the world’s population to get themselves lost: how is that anything but an unalloyed good?
Jason Fry reports: “Very happy to share that we’ve restored the cartography page on starwars.com that was originally developed for The Essential Atlas. You’ll find a revised galaxy map (based on the wonderful 2021 Star Wars Celebration poster map and designed by DK) and a new appendix of star systems that incorporates thousands of worlds from new canon.” Appendix isn’t quite the right word; it’s a 59-page gazetteer (PDF). Despite the page basically being a scrolling interface for a static map in JPEG format, it’s being positioned as a living document: Jason says the map will receive updates and error corrections (worlds from some of the most recent series aren’t necessarily up yet). His post lists the changes to the map since 2021. [Gizmodo]
Previously: Mapping Star Wars; Star Wars and Its Obsession with Maps.
The Seabed 2030 project announced on Saturday that “27.3% of the world’s ocean floor has now been mapped to modern standards. The increase in data represents more than four million square kilometres of newly mapped seafloor—an area roughly equivalent to the entire Indian subcontinent.” The above map shows the progress to date, with new bathymetric data added over the past year indicated in red. Data compiled by this project is freely available via GEBCO’s global grid.
Previously: Mapping the Ocean Floor by 2030; ‘Cartographically Speaking, Water Sucks’.
World maps tend to be wide (horizontal, landscape), whereas mobile phone screens tend to be tall (vertical, portrait). This makes world maps small and hard to see on phones: a problem when you’re trying to present data via a thematic world map (e.g. a choropleth map) on a web page, especially if you’re trying to show data on smaller countries. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung recently did a user study to test the efficacy of two map designs—one that splits continents up and portrays them in different scales to make them more legible on vertical screens, the other a hemispheric bubble map. The results were published in The Cartographic Journal; lead author Jonas Oesch provides a summary in this blog post. [Ralph Straumann]
The International Cartographic Association announced the passing of Ferdinand Jan (“Ferjan”) Ormeling Jr., “a pioneering figure in thematic and atlas cartography and a backbone of the development of the International Cartographic Association.” He was 82.
A champion of cartographic education, Ormeling co-authored with Menno-Jan Kraak the well-regarded textbook Cartography: Visualization of Spatial Data, now in its fourth edition, which remains a foundational reference for generations of mapmakers. Both during and after his career, he curated an impressive collection of atlases and historical maps. In 2003, his collection—enhanced by books and wall maps—was generously donated to Utrecht University, enriching its map room alongside his father’s legacy.
Maps on Vinyl: An Atlas of Album Cover Maps collects some 415 examples of record albums with maps on the cover. “The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book.” Self-published in Australia, it’s being distributed in the United States via The Map Center.
Related: Map Books of 2025.
