In any map projection, some distortions are acceptable. But when you purposefully tweak the equations to produce total messed up maps, then the outcome may seem interesting.
Robinson
Bonne
The two above and many other Accidental map are created by Andy Woodruff, Software developer at Indiemapper.
There was a time during by bachelors, I used to make geographic framework manually. The process included tedious geographical calculations, framing a projection, and tracing map with a pantograph. It was a week long exhaustive process. Attached are few of the work sheets I did during bachelors.
Mercator's Projection
Polar Zenithal Equal Area Projection
Bonne's Projections
And now with blessings of ArcGIS, I can do this with click of a button!
You might ignore a traffic sign but would your dare to speed up if you see a kid playing in the middle of a road? Optical illusions of a child are on some of the roads of Vancouver to get people to slow down. It will be on the experimental basis for a week. Is this a practical solution of the problem? What is your view on this?
Maps can be made for both visible and non visible data. We have seen non visible features like wind and temperature on map many a times in weather News. Now, here is a map of Wireless Network. A video created by Designer Timo Arnall projects wireless networks of WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. in the physical world. It is represented as circles with WiFi networks or portable gadgets as the epicenter.
“Habitar is a walk through new emerging scenarios in the city. It is a catalogue of ideas and images from artists, design and architecture studios, and hybrid research centers. Together they come up with a series of potential tools, solutions and languages to negotiate everyday life in the new urban situation”, as described by them.
As I said before, there is a very simple logic behind it. Geographers use this method of showing invisible maters with physical objects frequently in their work. Then, what’s the point to hype this just by giving a fancy name and calling it “New Concept”?
I always knew that this could be the reason!! but recently found this map- Driving is why you are fat! The map shows statewise how people get to work everyday and what is state's obesity ranking. Ranking is done for 50 states plus District of Columbia.
A map analyst inside me couldn’t help noticing a weird ranking system that is #1 in obesity is the place with minimum obese. The other thing I bumped into is some of the states have high drive rank as well as high walk/bike rank (eg: AL, MS, LA, OK), wouldn’t the higher rank for walking and biking mean a lower rank for driving as ranks are given by percentage of total population of state. I even don’t like the dull boring color combination used in the map!
Still, it is a decent map even if the details aren’t completely logical. The idea of block style presentation of statistic is nice for the evenness. This way smaller size state can also be focused similarly. Although the relation between the obesity and mode of communication is very obscure, this kind of map can be made for obesity in relation to food consumed, average Income or general economy. However, this particular map gives good representation of the different modes of transportations.
