Ever since Gerardus Mercator created his iconic map of the world in 1569–the one that first enabled ships to navigate at sea without getting lost–people have been drawing maps using the same ...

World maps distort — it's inherent in their design. Take a spherical object (the Earth) and try to represent it on a flat plane (paper), and some parts of the sphere are going to get stretched. On ...

Cartogram visualisation has undergone substantial evolution, merging geographic representation with quantitative data display. At its core, a cartogram resizes regions such that their areas are ...

A map can show much more than rivers, roads, and political boundaries. It can express an attitude. Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover illustration, called “View from 9th Avenue,” shows a ...