This is a great invention. Dénes Sátor, a design student from Hungary, was inspired by globes and created this egg-shaped map. If you squeeze the map it pops out and shows you details of the city of Budapest. So, if you are stressed out about finding your way around Budapest, this map could be of assistance in two ways: reducing your stress levels and showing you the right way! Great thinking.
Something awesome for a Friday: check out this ‘Can you identify the book from its map? – quiz’ by The Guardian. Worth your time. I must admit I only scored 6 out of 10.. Go go go! Here’s one of the questions to get you warmed up:
That’s a whole new way of looking at sushi! Tokyo-based chef Tama-chan – otherwise known as illustrator Takayo Chioyta – shapes sushi rolls into a range of designs, amongst others this globe. (by the way: her version of Munch’s The scream is also brilliant…) Bon appetit!
Do you know the website The Pop-Up City? They always share cool things (subsribe to their newsletter The Pop-Up City Daily, really!).
Today, their newsletter covers Strut: an app that gamifies travelling. Using the app while being on the move, you will turn tiles on a blurred map. The effect: more and more of the world will be visible, simply by you going places. After a while the app will show you what your radius of action is (how big, or maybe how small: take another route to get places!). Sweet! (iPhone only, no Android version yet)
Mappy quizzes and puzzles are a great way to spend your weekend, and a very dangerous thing to get informed about just before going to bed (as I discovered yesterday evening). Figure out where you are on various Google Maps snapshots in GeoGuessr. Credits for GeoGuessr go to Anton Wallén. Make sure to check out the website, because this screenshot only give you a bit of an impression. And yes, it does give you an immediate idea of the exploration fun and you can imagine the addictiveness of this website. Go explore and enjoy!
You might already know some illustrations by Christoph Niemann: he also did this great stereotype map I’ve shown earlier this year. Niemann’s great illustrations have appeared on covers of The New Yorker, Time, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration, and he has won awards from AIGA, the Art Directors Club and The Lead Awards. Yesterday a friend of mine pointed me at these funny Google-esque maps. You should actually see them all (because almost every single one cracked me up). Abduzeedoo created a nice overview, so make sure to check them all out.
Did you know the Mercator projection on maps really messes up your idea about size? The cylindrical map projection of the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (presented in 1569) is the standard map projection nowadays. While the linear scale is equal in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite. Get it? Well, check out this puzzle to understand the real impact of what you’ve just read. Impressive!
This one is not really cartographical but it did make me laugh out loud. Happy mapping with Poorly Drawn Lines:
9GAG always provides you with funny moments and guaranteed laughs. Here’s one, happy mappy monday!
