
Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it - herrherr
http://www.dominik-schwarz.net/potpourri/worldmap/
======
jamesfe
I was formerly a cartographer with the military; I have lots of experience
with large format maps, both of the world and of single countries (usually
Iraq). It was fun to read an article about a map that wasn't hastily tacked up
on a wall with nails or duct tape.

A few notes:

\- Paper sags over time. Good thing he mounted it to a board

\- We printed on tyvek for water/rip proofing, which was interesting. It's
surprisingly hard to rip.

\- I would have chosen a different projection maybe, but only for purely
aesthetics, not any scientific reason. If its hanging on a wall in your house
because you want it, you have all the license in the world to do whatever.

\- I can't tell, but did NZ make the cut?

\- And I may not have used blue for areas in the corners that are not actually
water.

What a great job though!

This reminded me of Colonels coming to me in the military saying - "I want all
of Iraq on my wall at 1:50,000" and as a junior enlisted man saying something,
very respectfully, like "Well, sir, Iraq is about 900km from top to bottom, so
that's 900,000m, and at 1:50,000 that's about 18m from top to bottom. How high
are your ceilings?"

~~~
amscanne
Out of curiosity, what projection would you go with?

~~~
oh_sigh
Dymaxion would be disorienting but it would certainly get you thinking

Example: [http://basementgeographer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/uap...](http://basementgeographer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/uapoK.jpg)

~~~
jacobolus
This is the projection I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, a
conformal spinoff of Cahill’s maps from the early 20th century:

[http://i.imgur.com/Y6ki0l9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Y6ki0l9.jpg)

I think it’ll be great for a map where the triangular sections are each about
a meter on a side (1:10M scale), or perhaps half a meter on a side (1:20M
scale).

------
Doctor_Fegg
"OpenStreetMap... the additional work to custom style the maps would be
extraordinary"

It absolutely wouldn't. Download TileMill or its successor, Mapbox Studio.
Adjust the (Carto)CSS. Done.

Though for a map of this scale I'd probably work straight from Natural
Earth[1] without involving OSM, to be honest.

Looks great, anyway.

[1] [http://www.naturalearthdata.com/](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/)

~~~
Mtinie
I'll be honest, I never really gave a lot of thought to whether or not I'm a
"map lover" until this HN topic appeared in my feed, but your comment hooked
me in...

...so much for this morning's priorities. /sigh

If you're familiar with the Natural Earth data set, do you know if it is
possible to apply a transformation so a map could be printed of the World
using the Cahill or Waterman projection?

I can envision a striking large-scale art piece that started from a
"butterfly" representation of the World.

~~~
maxerickson
The data is stored as coordinates, so given software that supports a
projection and understands the system used to store the data, it can be
transformed.

(Much recently available data is stored using geographic coordinates -
basically the latitude and longitude, and maybe the elevation, but a lot of
older data, and especially government data, is stored in coordinate systems
that are designed to limit the error in spatial analyses that are done on the
data. This isn't really something that you would have to understand deeply to
make a map in a given projection, but you might have to deal with it along the
way.)

------
quinndupont
This is so brilliantly reminiscent of Borges' famous fiction:

On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by
Andrew Hurley. ...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such
Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City,
and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those
Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a
Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point
for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the
Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was
Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up
to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still
today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars;
in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
—Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

~~~
nemo1618
So was that map the territory, or not?

~~~
igravious
I guess cuz it's fiction then the answer is no, the map is not the territory.
Or come to think of it, maybe yes. Or both. Or neither. I actually have no
idea. That's why I hate lit-crit. I do love me some Borges though. Maybe best
not to sweat it.

~~~
pndmnm
Borges is what actually got me interesting in literary criticism -- because of
the nature of his output, it's actually possible to read nearly all of his
major work (poetry and nonfiction included). This makes reading lit-crit about
him infinitely more satisfying. If you're remotely interested, I'd highly
recommend "The Narrow Act", "Invisible Work", and particularly "The Mystery To
A Solution", though this last one also requires a lot of Poe and even more
patience.

------
dietrichepp
This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I
guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to
choose from, why choose the one optimized for _navigation by compass_?

~~~
mewo2
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I think I'm going to defend Mercator here.

The Mercator projection was indeed originally designed for compass navigation,
but the reason it's still used for web mapping is slightly different. The
Mercator projection is _conformal_. What this means is that angles (and hence
in some sense shapes) are preserved locally. When we zoom in on a small
section of the Mercator projection, we get a reasonably accurate
representation of the actual shape of features. This is generally not true for
most more fashionable projections, which will stretch and skew things, so they
don't always look great when zoomed.

In general with map projections, you have to make a compromise between global
properties and local properties. Choosing Mercator means going full-on for
local quality, at the expense of the global map being quite distorted. This
makes it great for zoomable web maps, because most of the time the global map
is just used to find the area you're actually looking for.

Now, you could argue that for a living-room wall, you want something that
looks good globally. If it was my wall, I'd agree with you. However, this guy
seems to be really interested in local detail. He worries about his four-point
fonts becoming blurry, and about having as many small villages marked on the
map as possible. If he's interested in that kind of detail, then I think he
probably cares far more about local properties than the kind of global
properties that would bother me or you.

~~~
cousin_it
If I understand correctly, Mercator is the only conformal projection where
north is always up, no matter where you zoom in. That makes it nice for online
maps. If you relax the "north is up" requirement, there's tons of conformal
projections that look nice:
[http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjConf/projC...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjConf/projConf.html)

I really like the "classic Guyou" projection:
[http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjConf/Img/Z...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjConf/Img/Z1/mp2_Guyou-s80-z20.png).
It mangles the ocean pretty badly, but the sizes and shapes of the landmasses
are surprisingly realistic, and it's rectangular to boot.

~~~
mturmon
I like the "classic Guyou" projection you linked to as well.

But referring back to the OP, notice the grid of books and curios along the
entire neighboring wall, and the grid-like pattern of the wood flooring
underneath. The Mercator projection seems of a piece with this grid theme in
the room.

Your curvy Guyou projection would look great in this Lautner house:
[http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/53e53330f92ea16cd900340...](http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/53e53330f92ea16cd9003404/LR%20overall%20full.jpg)

------
Demiurge
I wish someone would have recommended him to tweak one of many available OSM
styles in TileMill. He also could have exported the layer in any tile shape,
projection, and resolution using mapnik. You can even render to vector
trivially, which comes in very handy for any printable pdfs.

[https://github.com/mapbox/osm-bright](https://github.com/mapbox/osm-bright)

[https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/MapnikRenderers](https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/MapnikRenderers)

~~~
relet
The project was started 1,5 years ago at the time of writing the article.

~~~
Demiurge
I've been using Mapnik for about 8 years now, I think, since it was the first
alternative to MapServer. OSM has always been using Mapnik, with mapnik styles
in CartoCSS for a long time too
([http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/CartoCSS](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/CartoCSS)).
TileMill beta
([https://github.com/mapbox/tilemill/tree/v0.5.1](https://github.com/mapbox/tilemill/tree/v0.5.1))
came out 4 years ago. So, I definitely would have made the same recommendation
1.5 years ago. It still came out pretty cool :)

Feel free to ask me any gis or web mapping questions as
demiurge@irc.freenode.org, I'd love to facilitate more beautiful maps out
there.

------
srj
"Even when the data quality is great the real challenge for a map service is
to decide what they should and should not display. Google does an excellent
job in always showing the right amount of information."

I used to work on tile rendering at Google and considerable effort was spent
on this. Thank you!

------
bedatadriven
FWIW, a shameless plug for the company where I had my first programming job as
a 17 year old: www.marketmaps.com. They will print and ship HUGE maps without
a moment's hesitation. Choose a nice world map with a decent projection or
send them a PDF and they'll overnight to you :-)

~~~
junto
Oddly, they don't seem to have world maps advertised online. Everything else
though!

~~~
bedatadriven
Try here: [http://www.mapsales.com/world-wall-
maps.aspx](http://www.mapsales.com/world-wall-maps.aspx)

I think marketmaps.com landing page is pretty focused on the US, but they have
a pretty extensive catalog, and you could also design your map with QGIS from
OSM data and send them the PDF.

~~~
chippy
Do you know of any UK / Euro companies that do the same?

------
derefr
This article's throwaway notion of glow-in-the-dark pins has got me thinking
about how to make a surface with _light-up LED_ pins that can be stuck in
arbitrarily.

\- You could use (cleverly-braided+insulated) regular LEDs if there was a
breadboard or something behind the map, but that'd be both huge and
inconvenient.

\- Maybe LEDs with inductive coils and a large backing induction mat?

\- Given a metallic backing, and a regular fridge-magnet-like magnet, is there
some way to trade _some of_ the magnetic force the magnet is exerting on the
backing for electrical power? Or maybe power a light using the normal force of
the backing _on_ the magnet. Either way, this would probably have the side-
effect of reducing the coercivity in a regular permanent magnet way faster
than otherwise. (You can make the whole backing surface a weak electromagnet,
though! I wonder if that's more or less energy-intensive than making an
induction mat of that size...)

\- Maybe ignore conductive power, and try for radio power? RFID-powered LEDs?
Crystal-radio-like LEDs? Or even just phosphorous-coated pinheads (not the
matchstick kind; the CRT kind) with an infrared lamp or blacklight on the
other wall?

\- Or maybe, if you don't care about the LEDs _only_ lighting up when on the
wall, you could just make them "permanently" lit in the same way some exit
signs are: put a tiny little bit of something radioactive in there, and then
surround that with fluorescent gas in a glass shell.

\- A chemical solution would be very interesting for its own sake. If there
was potentially chemoluminescent fluid in the backplane (which would then have
to be a gel/sponge), and the pins could pull it in via capillary action
somehow—maybe the heads on the pins could be squeezed, making them effectively
into little bulb syringes—then fluid could end up in the pinhead and react
with something inside.

~~~
ianbicking
Maybe put a strong light behind the map, and use a fiberglass pin? Kind of
like a Lite-Brite.

~~~
simplemath
That would be a reasonably practical solution with a lowish profile lightbox
as the mounting.

Hmmm.

------
andyjdavis
This jumped out at me.

>I am now lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to many different
countries and I sadly realized that this planet is not nearly as big as I
hoped when I was a kid.

Fly less. I find that my sense of how big the world is is related to how
frequently I fly Vs traveling by train, bus, motorcycle or anything else
really.

Hurtling from one airport to another at ~800km/hr gives you a false impression
about the distances you are covering. I suspect the speeds are simply so fast
that we don't have the ability to intuitively appreciate just how far we are
traveling. When you take slower forms of transport you suddenly realize how
freaking huge the world is.

Flying also isolates you from the area you are traveling across. When you
don't fly you see that there is in fact a vast amount of stuff (cities, towns,
farming areas, mountains, rivers etc) between the airports. When I fly a lot
the world is reduced to a network of airports.

An example from my own life. My wife and I once flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
then traveled overland (trains and buses with the occasional ferry) through
Malaysia, up through Thailand, around part of Laos, back into Thailand and
then over into Cambodia.

Travel time => 8 months.

My impression of how big the world is => absolutely massive.

Then we flew back from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur, where we started.

Travel time => less than 2 hours in the air.

After a few additional flights, my impression of how big the world is => tiny.

------
lazyant
National Geographic mural map is pretty decent (but yes, it's heavy on
borders) [http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-
map...](http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-maps/world-
maps/world-mural-map--blue-ocean)

~~~
davegardner
The Earth-toned version looks much nicer IMHO
[http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-
map...](http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-maps/world-
maps/world-mural-map--earth-toned)

~~~
raimondious
Seeing what he ended up with, I don't think he would have been happy with how
much of these maps are graphic design, not map.

~~~
therealdrag0
I think also the lack of smaller cities.

------
kens
I can't believe how negative the comments are here, criticizing the
projection. I don't really like the term "middlebrow dismissal" but it seems
to apply.

As an aside, have you looked closely at Greenland on a globe? It looks all
wrong - long and skinny like someone messed up the aspect ratio.

~~~
bobbles
There's an unbelievable amount of pretentiousness in this thread, it's
ridiculous.

~~~
function_seven
Imagine the roar if he'd used Comic Sans as the typeface for all place names.
And made the frame out of re-purposed shipping pallets.

------
xt
Very cool. But I was surprised to see he chose Mercator.

See: [https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

~~~
castell
I thought that too.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection)

Which map projections would you choose? A difficult decision:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections)

~~~
anc84
Robinson or Winkel-tripel like National Geographic does.

~~~
coldpie
Hammer retroazimuthal, back hemisphere. Which is, coincidentally, also my
favorite skateboarding move.

~~~
HCIdivision17
This is really cool looking, and I have no idea what you'd use it for.

And this is just the neatest thing to play with:
[https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/hammer-
retroazimuthal/](https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/hammer-retroazimuthal/)

~~~
fennecfoxen
"As a retroazimuthal projection, azimuths (directions) are correct from any
point to the designated center point." (-- Wikipedia, which knows everything
and is never wrong.)

It looks like one retroazimuthal variant (the Craig retroazimuthal) is
sometimes called the "Mecca projection", so you know which way to kneel at
sundown if you're into that sort of thing.

------
ZeroGravitas
Cool project.

I'm somewhat surprised that they didn't end up using an Open Street Map
derivitive. If Google was good enough, then they'd probably find something
from Mapbox or others that use OSM data acceptable, and many provide tools so
that "the additional work to custom style the maps would be extraordinary"
wouldn't be true.

It's also a bit wierd that the comparison screenshots are all at a different
level of zoom from the one's that he wanted to use. Many online maps emphasis
different things at different levels.

------
hiby007
Just want to know if someone will be interested in such a kick starter project
if "someone" was to build this commercially?

~~~
visakanv
My wife would love it, so I'd buy one.

------
btbuildem
Back in the day when Google Maps first came out, I got a bit.. obsessed with
it. I wrote a bit of code to download map tiles (they had an interesting,
recursive spiral indexing scheme) and stitch them into large images, and
printed poster-sized satellite imagery on a 4' plotter I should not have had
access to at work. Such beautiful imagery..

------
facorreia
A very inspiring story of what can be achieved with talent, determination and
resourcefulness. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good.

It also makes it very evident how odd it can be to project the surface of a
sphere over a flat surface. The distortion of some shapes leaps to the eye.

------
jkot
I printed 4x1.2m night sky panorama for my living room. I worked on Skyview
fork (astronomical image stitching library), after some processing I got 5GB
JPEG with 60K to 20K resolution. 6 hours of work and 80 euro printing fee.

------
haihaibye
Not sure of the resolution but the easiest solution would be wallpaper.
Googling "world map wallpaper" returns quite a lot of results, eg:

[http://st.houzz.com/simgs/31e1e6fa0fd87c96_4-7734/contempora...](http://st.houzz.com/simgs/31e1e6fa0fd87c96_4-7734/contemporary-
wallpaper.jpg)

~~~
jannes
The picture you linked is clearly a 3D rendering and not an actual photo.

~~~
haihaibye
Yes it is, it wasn't obvious on my phone...

Another one:
[https://www.walldecalcompany.com/product_images/x/995/world_...](https://www.walldecalcompany.com/product_images/x/995/world_map_wallpaper_zimmer__00851_zoom.jpg)

------
chriswarbo
It looks really nice, but it seems a shame to me that the ocean appears
featureless.

If I were printing all that blue ink, I'd want ocean trenches to stand out in
the same way that the mountain ranges do :)

------
stefap2
Since it was stitched using a number of smaller images printed from Google
maps, wouldn't you end up with a bunch of "google-maps" watermarks all over
the map?

~~~
maxerickson
The watermark is per screen, so you just have to crop off the watermarks (and
account for the cropping as you set the view for each screenshot).

------
zeristor
Why do people feel like they can just edit Antarctica out?

~~~
mrec
At least Antarctica is practically uninhabited.

[http://worldmapswithout.nz/](http://worldmapswithout.nz/) on the other
hand...

------
smegel
> There is a profession called »plasterer«

Maybe it is a German thing, in Australia a plasterer is anyone who installs
plaster boards on the interior of houses by nailing them directly to the stud
work (the wooden tresses).

------
bluedino
It would kill me to stick pins in something that nice looking.

~~~
iak8god
Ugh, that was my first thought when I got to the end too. After all that work
and expense, I was hoping he'd installed a ferromagnetic backing and was going
to use tiny magnets as markers.

~~~
lostfocus
Well, once he killed it with his pins, he can print a new one with a different
projection.

~~~
unreal37
Yes, the printing was the easy part. In a few years, when the ink fades, he
can print it again and remount on the same surface.

------
nether
For more fun, check out this raised relief map of California:
[http://www.worldmapsonline.com/hs951californiamaprr.htm](http://www.worldmapsonline.com/hs951californiamaprr.htm)
(discussed at [http://redd.it/34azy8](http://redd.it/34azy8))

For a CA transplant who does a lot of driving up and down the state, this map
has been fascinating.

------
vilhelm_s
My dad has a more low-tech approach: he buys a bunch of maps from the National
Land Survey, cuts away the margins with scissors, and tapes them together with
scotch tape. Rather than world maps, he likes large-scale maps of particular
locations.

It's really very cool to a have that kind of wall-scale high-resolution
information display. When I get a more permanent place to live, I'm tempted to
do the same thing.

------
imaginenore
Too bad he chose Mercator projection. Gall–Peters or Robinson would be my
choice.

------
malandrew
This is awesome. I've always wanted a massive dymaxion project and never
thought of going about it this way.

Now I need to figure out how to convert open-street-map tiles into a dymaxion
projection, which I can then print and mount on triangular boards.

[http://www.learnwebmapping.com/2012/01/dymaxion-web-
mapping/](http://www.learnwebmapping.com/2012/01/dymaxion-web-mapping/)

[http://indiemaps.com/blog/2011/04/dymaxion-projection-in-
ope...](http://indiemaps.com/blog/2011/04/dymaxion-projection-in-openlayers/)

[http://www.gislounge.com/dymaxion-map-
projection/](http://www.gislounge.com/dymaxion-map-projection/)

------
kichuku
Does anyone know how to achieve this for individual states of India? I would
like to have huge maps printed for individual states which shows even the big
villages.Is this possible? Or atleast can we do this for big cities like
Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi?

~~~
detaro
Look into the openstreetmap based tools mentioned in other comments. They
allow to customize a lot about the presentation.

------
haberman
I am so conflicted about the "pins on a map" practice of marking your travels.

On one hand I totally buy the article's explanation: "Putting pins in a map is
something I've loved doing for many years. They inspire me and remind me of
great experiences."

But on the downside, I'd be really afraid that the completionist in me would
be motivated to visit exotic places _because_ of the pin I'd be able to add to
the map. ie. going to a place just so I could say I've been there.

I'm sure I'd never book a trip _solely_ for that reason, but I'd be afraid it
would be more of a factor than it should.

~~~
rconti
That actually sounds like a fantastic way and reason to experience the world.
It's far better than most systems people use to pick travel spots: speak the
language, major capital city I've heard of, etc etc.

------
chrissyb
I read through and couldnt help but think of a video about Perter Bellerby i
watched a few years back who makes some of the most beautiful globes I've ever
seen. [https://vimeo.com/103263135](https://vimeo.com/103263135)

I really like Domink's project but I would have liked to have seen more diy
trial and error.

Watching this video of Jimmy Diresta's would have made mounting on a timber
french cleat a breeze.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65tH4iMbg4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65tH4iMbg4)

------
DigitalSea
Amazing. I have always been somewhat obsessed with maps since I was a kid. My
light up and quite massive globe was one of my most prized possessions when
other kids were more concerned with their Gameboy's and lego.

A full-scale wall map has always crossed my mind, not making one, but buying
one. I did try and find one once and came up empty handed. I am probably in
the minority here, but I like the Mercator projection and I think it looks
great on a wall in that size (at least North is always up) even if it isn't
exactly well-loved by that many.

------
thom
Clicked through thinking the "what I've learned from it" would contain some
rousing geopolitical epiphany. Alas no, stuck some paper on a wall, put some
pins in it, cool, cool.

------
zongitsrinzler
I used to do this all the time in the military. We would glue together and
laminate smaller maps into one big map (That was then used in a control point
for real time planning).

~~~
derefr
I was about to say—isn't this sort of thing (fine-granularity topographic
surveying/GIS) exactly what the Professional version of Google Earth is for,
marketed to governments/militaries/etc.?

~~~
mavhc
Which is now free, and lets you save images at 4800x4800 pixels, if you adjust
your window just right. Not much use for flat projections though

------
alexqgb
So it looks like xkcd isn't _always_ on the money.
[http://xkcd.com/977/](http://xkcd.com/977/)

------
barbs
This is really cool. Thanks for documenting and capturing the meticulous
process of creating this, it was an enjoyable read. I'd love to see a really
high definition photo that captures both the scale of the map and the amount
of detail in it, preferably in a format that makes it easy to zoom around on
different locations to see the detail. Not sure how feasible that would be
though :).

------
crumpled
I love that the small details are preserved; that's gorgeous. But the omission
of Antarctica would unsettle me every day until I redid it.

------
yuletide666
Such a tragedy that he used Mercator for this :(

------
axus
His idea for overlaying the map with a projector reminded me of the giant
globe covered in OLED screens, installed in a museum in Japan:

[https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/sp/tsunagari/geocosmos.htm...](https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/sp/tsunagari/geocosmos.html)

------
brotoss
Or you can just buy this big ass one from Ikea for 129 bucks:

[http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70119430/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70119430/)

~~~
srj55
Or this one: [http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-
map...](http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/maps/wall-maps/world-
maps/world-mural-map--blue-ocean)

------
sebastianconcpt
Nice project. BTW the guy also made a trip to Chernobyl and shared some nice
pics:

[http://www.dominik-schwarz.net/reisen/tschernobyl2015/](http://www.dominik-
schwarz.net/reisen/tschernobyl2015/)

------
ChrisArchitect
a long time ago, like, in the early years of google maps, I used some _perl_
code someone published to pull down the tiles necessary to print off a 16 page
map that I could tape together and put on the wall. I think the code was taken
down shortly after because of a legal claim. Google obviously doesn't want
their service/tiles being used for that....data/imagery owned by them and
whatever map data company... Whether you can easily download the tiles or not
due to browser caching, doesn't make it legal to use in stuff.

But all in all, hats off, fun project/good results

~~~
germanier
Well, the poster is in Germany, so German laws apply and section 53 of the
copyright law (which is referred to in the post) clearly states that this is
allowed use:

> It shall be permissible for a natural person to make single copies of a work
> for private use on any medium, insofar as they neither directly nor
> indirectly serve commercial purposes, as long as no obviously unlawfully-
> produced model or a model which has been unlawfully made available to the
> public is used for copying. A person authorised to make copies may also
> cause such copies to be made by another person if no payment is received
> therefore, or if it involves copies on paper or a similar medium which have
> been effected by the use of any kind of photomechanical technique or by some
> other process having similar effects.

[http://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urh...](http://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urhg.html#p0297)

------
mparramon
Just found out about www.wallpapered.com, pretty relevant to this article.

------
jaytaylor
Did he share a link to the map file that he produced? I'm not seeing it, and
it would be incredibly generous if he had made this available for others.

~~~
aye
Unfortunately not: [http://www.dominik-
schwarz.net/potpourri/worldmap/#fn4](http://www.dominik-
schwarz.net/potpourri/worldmap/#fn4)

------
hitlin37
would be interesting to add 3d depth on it to show mountains height and
depths. No idea how that would be done using paper.

~~~
brute
Laminated object manufacturing [1]

Results look amazing [2][3]

Would probably be quite heavy.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_object_manufacturing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_object_manufacturing)

[2] [http://www.gizmag.com/mcor-iris-
paper-3d-printer/32903/pictu...](http://www.gizmag.com/mcor-iris-
paper-3d-printer/32903/pictures#2)

[3] [http://www.gizmag.com/mcor-iris-
paper-3d-printer/32903/pictu...](http://www.gizmag.com/mcor-iris-
paper-3d-printer/32903/pictures#5)

------
faisalkhalid80
nice. i love world maps too, i've created a graffiti art series of wall sized
world maps. you can check them out here
[http://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/323803](http://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/323803)

------
rcknr
Notes about projection choice seem to prevail, which is nerdy. Well, 400 euros
for a wall map seems like a lot of money, but what isn't described very well
is how the source file was created. It seems like the guy was manually
stitching screenshots. God knows how much time did this take. There's little
to no hacking in this project. Just the bit where he makes something custom.

~~~
brazzy
I'm pretty sure the costs were not a running tally, i.e. they need to be added
up for a total of over 1140 EUR.

~~~
rcknr
I was also confused about that. Just assumed he incremented expenses with each
step, but I think you're right, since 10 euros for framing doesn't sound
legit. At over thousand of material/services cost the whole thing appears to
be even less sensible.

------
cwmma
another possible map that would have looked fantastic as a big wall map would
be stamen watercolor
[http://maps.stamen.com/watercolor](http://maps.stamen.com/watercolor)

------
Klasiaster
mercator is so ridiculous, why not
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection)

------
alinspired
Great project and lots of followup info in the thread - thanks!

------
davidslv
amazing work, I always dreamt about having a world map in one of my future
house walls, thanks for sharing, I will definitely come back to your article
at some point.

------
JCordeiro
This is a very cool project. Turned out nice!

------
spronkey
www.mapworld.co.nz sells similarly sized wall maps, for those who don't want
to go to such hassle :)

------
amelius
> I've spent 1,5 years working on this project

So wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a huge display then? :)

~~~
pharke
Or a decent high res LED projector, would have cost less than the foam board
he stuck the map to and he could have it done in a day.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Given his objectives specifically included high resolution enough to see
details on the map up close, even a 4K projector would have fallen far short
of this.

~~~
cuu508
Yes, for 3mx2m at 300dpi one would need something like 35k projector

~~~
pharke
Projectors aren't limited to displaying static images, but I guess the format
is a matter of taste.

------
Thiz
Greenland is fucking huge.

------
cmstoken
Amazing work!

------
mreiland
I'm wondering why he has a skull for a bookstop :)

------
pambospalas
awesome article!

------
carlob
I don't really understand why OP decided to print it and glue it in separate
steps. It seems rather expensive rather than finding someone to do all the
work.

For example these guys would do the job for 142 euros
[http://sprint24.net/go/29ul/](http://sprint24.net/go/29ul/) I'm not sure
they'd ship internationally though (or at all, for an item of that size).

~~~
aw3c2
Cleaned link: [http://sprint24.net/buy/online/rigid-
panels/panels/](http://sprint24.net/buy/online/rigid-panels/panels/)

Please don't use shortened URLs and don't sneak affiliate codes.

~~~
carlob
There was no affiliate code, the link only contained a bunch of query
parameters to match the size and material of OP's map.

------
3327
I tried 5% of what you did and failed... Basically I would pay for one... I
guess this one is saved on the project list backburner.

www.kayatilev.com most of my work is furniture. Finishing up a coffee table
would love feedback.

~~~
ddingus
This is an awesome project!

I get the projection issues. He wants to see the details and be able to roam
them. For one who is going to spend a lot of time close up, this project is a
home run. Well done, and I'm envious.

When I was a kid, I would collect the large size maps Nat Geo would produce.
Had a variety of them on the wall, and for reasons very similar to the ones
expressed by this guy. It's fun to think about the places in the world, and
associate them in various ways.

Visits, reading about things, photos, whatever, can all be placed into context
and having a big map helps one with a sense of the world and it's many
features and people. The pins bother me, but I stuck pins in mine too, and
since he can reprint, no worries! I wonder if drawn tungsten or something
might serve as a very small diameter pin? Could get a length of it, sharpen
the ends, and dip into something to form the heads...

