Tag: world map

Natural Resources Canada Releases Updated World Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The World (Natural Resources Canada)
Natural Resources Canada

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).

Fun with Lego and Spreadsheets

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Jon Schwabish has been building the Lego world map (previously), but he’s also been building a spreadsheet version. “Because the map is laid out in a grid, it’s primed to be built in Excel. And voila, I present to you the Excel version of the Lego World Map! I built a grid in a big Excel spreadsheet with each number then placed in the appropriate spot according to the instructions. Each number is then assigned a color using Excel’s Conditional Formatting menu.” Good for making drafts of your Lego map, or also if you can’t lay hands on the real thing.

Lego’s 11,695-Piece World Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Lego Art World Map
Lego

Lego’s recently announced world map is 104 cm by 65 cm (41 × 26 inches) and has a staggering 11,695 pieces. Part of the Lego Art series aimed at adults, it’s built basically pixel-by-pixel, and comes with pin pieces to mark locations once it’s finished.

Lego says that you can customize the oceans in any number of colours or patterns, but it seems to me, based on the building instructions, that there’s nothing stopping you from doing the continents completely differently as well. You’re not physically limited to the three choices the instructions give you: Europe and Africa in the centre, the Americas in the centre, or Asia and Australia in the centre. You could do a different map projection, or even a different globe. But that’s the point of Lego, isn’t it?

Anyway, it’s available as of this week for US$250/€250/£230/C$350; it’s already out of stock at the online store but may be available through other channels. [Boing Boing]

The Cantino Planisphere

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Cantino Planisphere, ca. 1502. Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Maps aren’t always named for their creators. The Gough map and the Selden map are named the people who owned them last before bequeathing them to the Bodleian Library. The Cantino planisphere, a Portuguese map of the world showing that country’s discoveries in the Americas and along the African coast, is named after the person who, ah, acquired it: in 1502 Alberto Cantino, undercover agent for the Duke of Ferrara, smuggled it out of Portugal, where maps were state secrets. Here’s an article about the Cantino planisphere from the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine.

One Line, One Map, One World

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

1line1map1world

Joseph Berkner’s One Line—One Map—One World is a map of the world drawn in a single line.

In mapping, lines are (mostly) used as borders to divide the space in sections: borders between land and water, borders between different altitudes or borders between nations. As a person who loves to make maps, for the last weeks I was thinking about what I can do to draw a line to CONNECT instead of DIVIDE. So I created a world map consisting of a single line. When watching the map from far away you cannot see the connections. It looks like everything is divided. But if you go closer you can see that everything is one. To realize that we are somehow all one community you need to go close to others.

The map is available for purchase as a print or digital download.