For this new project I wanted to design the fantasy map I always dreamed of. Over the last twenty years, in my work as a graphic designer and mapmaker, I have enjoyed reading numerous books on lost continents, mythological animals, phantom islands and cartographic errors. However, I have never found all those ingredients gathered in a single fantasy map. That’s why I decided to create “Lost Worlds”, a poster in which I have compiled some of the main details about lost continents, historical errors on famous maps, islands that once were believed to really exist, fantastic animals… The documentation work has been meticulous and, for the final design, I have chosen the cases that I consider to be the most representative. It is, in short, a map to feed our imagination and our dreams.
Representing the planet Earth on paper has always been problematic and, in fact, is one of the main problems that cartography has always faced. For centuries, hundreds of different methods have been devised for this work, through what are known as cartographic projections, i.e. ways of projecting a spherical surface onto a plane by drawing the the world on paper. This, which might at first seem like nonsense, is impossible, there is no “perfect map”, because there is no way to represent the shape and proportions of the earth’s surface on paper without introducing deformations of any kind. Now, if we are not so ambitious, and we take a small portion of the planet to make the map, then we can create quite accurate maps.
Jack van Wijk was thinking about this idea until he came up with a solution that convinced him: to divide the world into a thousand pieces! Thus was born his proposal of cartographic projection, which would be a set of many small maps (triangles) united in a very special way. Okay, the result is strange and “rough” looking, as if the world had turned into a hedgehog, but it’s an interesting proposition. This video explains the idea of the Miriahedral Projection (where “Miriahedral” would be a polyhedron with many faces, according to the term coined by Michiel Wijers).
That was almost ten years ago now. The proposal is more theoretical than practical (it is unlikely that such maps will become popular), but it is certainly an interesting idea with which to create attractive compositions. Basically, the method to construct this projection (mathematics apart), regardless of where we center the map, consists of projecting the globe in the form of a myriad of shapes, cutting out its triangles and extending the whole on a two-dimensional surface (images by Jack van Wijk).
This is a project that I developed some time ago and that I have just announced in Kickstarter. This is an infographic poster with a multitude of curiosities about our planet. Would you like to find out what it is? You have all the details here:
With this project you will not only have the opportunity to get the downloadable version of the poster for high quality printing, but if you don’t already have the 2018 version of Maptorian (my vector world maps collection), you can get it along with the poster.
Location of Équihen-Plage, in France. Map made with Maptorian vector maps.Today, Sunday, I got up with the intention of taking up again the notes on geography. Yesterday I found in a copy of La Ilustración Artística corresponding to October 12,1908 a mention of a picturesque place:
There are on the coasts of the English Channel and half a dozen kilometres away from Boulogne-sur-Mer, a small village called Equihen, which enjoys a certain reputation for the exquisite clams that are caught in its waters. Apart from this, the village in question is only known to a few bathers who, fleeing from the hustle and bustle and the expensive life of fashionable spas, come to its quiet beach in search of health for their body and rest for their spirit.
But it has more than its clams and beach to attract the attention of outsiders, something that if more generally known would surely provide a good contingent of tourists, who could see there a spectacle perhaps unique in its class and as interesting as new. We are referring to the houses of many of its inhabitants, houses that are nothing else (…) than old inverted-boats, in whose sides doors and windows have been opened and whose interior has been arranged in such a way that a family can live more or less comfortably in it.
The image attracts a lot of attention, so I decided to find out if there are still similar constructions in the same village today. And, in fact, a simple search assaults us with a thousand and one images because the chronicler of the early twentieth century was right: the place was going to attract tourism. The houseboats (les quilles en l’ air) of Équihen-Plage, completely refurbished to the present style, nevertheless maintain the style of the fishermen who built such structures with old inverted boat hulls. The place is famous for this and today these late nineteenth and early twentieth century dwellings are part of the local heritage.
Equihen-Plage nowadays. Image of Bateloupreaut. CC-By-Sa.
