
A Map of the World Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award - igrs
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2016/10/28/hajime-narukawa-authagraph/
======
themodelplumber
The Good Design Award is pretty neat. Years ago when I lived in Japan I bought
a mechanical pencil[0] that I absolutely loved. After more than a decade of
use, I googled the pencil name and found that it had won a Good Design award.
I thought it was great that a sub-$10 pencil could win something like that.

[0] [http://ameblo.jp/staedler-
rotring/entry-11510382804.html](http://ameblo.jp/staedler-
rotring/entry-11510382804.html)

~~~
jbtow
Wow I received this exact pencil two years ago for Christmas and I've used it
nearly every day since it was gifted to me. In fact I just put it down to type
this. I am not surprised at all that it has won a design award. I was the type
of person to misplace pencils like socks out of the laundry, but I treat this
pencil as a companion.

~~~
themodelplumber
That's awesome, I didn't expect to hear from someone else who owned one.

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danielmorozoff
Can anyone working in cartography comment on this?

What is the state of active research in cartography? Map making used to be one
of the most prized technical skills and I was wondering where the field is
moving.

First thing that came to mind was new d3 transform...

~~~
Waterluvian
I don't work as a cartographer but I studied geography for a Bachelor's and
Master's. That being said, my knowledge has atrophied a lot.

I was exposed to hundreds of map projections in school, so I'm still kind of
trying to figure out what the novelty is here. It just looks like a Japan-
centrerd equal-area projection. The tetrahedron is kind of neat. Projections
are generally planar, cylindrical, or conical. By using a mosaic of planes, I
imagine the formula for this projection would be unbelievably complex, making
it much less general purpose.

When you want to represent a spheroid on a 2d surface, you have to distort one
or more of shape, area, direction, distance. The objective when selecting a
projection is to understand the intended purpose and audience.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say the relevance here is the exploration of
what projections we most commonly use and if they're still the best choices
for today's purposes and audiences.

I would love to see what Tissot's indicatrix looks like for this projection.

~~~
gcb0
you nailed it. Japan has a huge love for Japan centered maps. if you look at
any early nes or Sega games, all the maps are your familiar Cartesian but with
Japan in the center, making the jump from ny to London look much longer than
la to Tokyo.

~~~
yongjik
> Japan has a huge love for Japan centered maps.

You make it sound as if it's unusual. Of course they prefer Japan in the
middle, they're in Japan! Just like Brits (I presume) have a huge love for
Britain-centered maps. I'll bet not a single world map in British textbooks
has the world cut in the Atlantic.

~~~
wst_
It isn't that. Or at least not only that. They are pragmatic nation. They are
considering who and why would want to use the map, and then tailor it to meet
the needs of an audience.

I am not sure about other countries but European maps are always oriented for
north. Which works fine when you read them in book, but not necessarily when
you are looking at big guide map on the street. Yes, sure, this map may show
red "you are here" mark, but it is still difficult to find out your way as a
map itself is always oriented to north, while you may not be.

Japanese street maps are oriented on you (most of them). When you're standing
in front of it - "up" on map always means "go forward". Which might be
confusing at the beginning, if you came from Europe. But the more you look at
them, the more easy it is to find your way.

~~~
pitt1980
Hollywood Studios in Disney World had a park map where the entrance to the
park wasn't at the bottom, I found it really disorienting, I think due to the
effect you mentioned, I naturally want to walk 'up' to 'go forward' through
the map

[http://www.wdwmagic.com/attractions/disneys-hollywood-
studio...](http://www.wdwmagic.com/attractions/disneys-hollywood-
studios/gallery/04apr2016-april-2016-disney's-hollywood-studios-guide-map-
with-backlot-area-removed/27424.htm)

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ludwigschubert
While interesting, I'm not sure the actual map as pictured is a "good design":

One of the strengths and success criteria of the Mercator projection is that
it allows us to largely ignore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on our maps.
Notice how much of this map is taken up by it. While interesting from a
planetary perspective, it simply isn't that important to everyday life of most
map users.

The proposed design thus has too low a land area to map area ratio to be very
useful.

The projection itself would be useful as a digital map (with zooming and
panning) or as an icon, though.

~~~
usaphp
But map should be accurate in the first place. It's not like you can just
ignore things you don't want to see there just because they are naturally to
big and take up too much space

~~~
win_ini
Actually humans can do that. We orient ourselves using landmarks. If you look
at theme park maps, ski resort maps, maps of tourist areas downtown produced
by local organizations, subway maps....

All of them are wildly inaccurate in terms of proportions and distances. But
notice - almost all are oriented to people not very familiar with that area.
Certain big monuments may be left out (the highway that runs by water park,
the big electric station across the street etc.

~~~
alblue
Harry Beck invented the schematic map in 1931 for the London Underground (the
worlds first underground railway). At first it wasn't widely accepted as a
good idea (because it distorted relative distances) but over time has become a
design icon and repeated elsewhere.

[http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-london-
undergr...](http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-london-underground-
map-the-design-that-shaped-a-city)

[https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-
heritage/...](https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-
heritage/londons-transport-a-history/london-underground/a-brief-history-of-
the-underground)

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GavinMcG
> "AuthaGraph... faithfully represents all oceans and continents"

What does this mean? Literally, that is impossible, so what's it _actually_
preserving and distorting?

It looks like angle is distorted. Is that it?

~~~
al452
For one thing there is massive distortion of relative distances in southern
parts... New Zealand or Australia to Antarctica is something like 4 hours
flight, not halfway across the planet.

~~~
hyperion2010
Except for the fact that it tessellates so all you need to do is make the map
a bit bigger and that distortion goes away (seen in [0]).

0\. [http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/autha...](http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/authagraph-world-map-2.jpg)

~~~
Semiapies
A map shouldn't need an infinite series of other maps to be useful.

~~~
klodolph
You're looking for a map where a straightish line gives you the direct path
between two points? That's completely impossible. Flying from LA to Tokyo will
take you over Alaska. Try to work that one out on a map.

(Yeah, you can make a map where straight lines work, but only for a chosen
point of origin or antipodes around that point.)

~~~
jpatokal
Then why are you labeling it "completely impossible"? Here's a perfectly
sensible straightish-line path between LAX and NRT, using a polar-aspect
orthographic projection:

[http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=LAX-
NRT&MS=wls&MP=p&DU=mi](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=LAX-NRT&MS=wls&MP=p&DU=mi)

~~~
klodolph
Yes, if you cherry pick the right projection for a particular route you'll get
something like that, which is exactly what I said. But plot Johannesburg to
Sydney on the same map.

What I said is impossible is to have a map where all routes between pairs of
points look sensible. It gets worse if you optimize for other factors, like
making maps equal-area, conformal, rectilinear, etc.

~~~
jpatokal
[http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JNB-
SYD&MP=polar&DU=mi](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JNB-SYD&MP=polar&DU=mi) ?

There's an easy way to make all routes between pairs of points look sensible
at once: plot them on a 3D globe ;)

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fernandosoteras
It remind me of Buckminster Fuller map work in the '40
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarion_map)

~~~
rerx
fixed link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)

~~~
yc-kraln
They were indeed --
[http://www.authagraph.com/projects/description/【作品解説】記事01/?l...](http://www.authagraph.com/projects/description/【作品解説】記事01/?lang=en)
(click #3)

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mrcactu5
The only map I can think of from the sphere to the plane (and periodically
tiles) uses genus 0 Riemann surfaces and quadratic differentials. And I know
he didn't do that.

Nonetheless, there's a fascinating work by Anton Zorich called "Flat Surfaces"
(it's a great discussion with lots of pictures))
[https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0609392](https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0609392) The
geodesics on a flat plane is the straight line -- while the geodesics on a
sphere are the great arcs. So there has to be a fair amount of distortion.

I could imagine just drawing a map of the world on the surface of a cube
instead of a sphere. That might come out pretty bad.

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Aardwolf
On a true spherical globe, Brasil does not look as pointy as on the map. So
it's still deforming something at least.

Sadly, not a single high resolution image of this to be found on the internet
:(

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ekianjo
The Good Design Award is not prestigious anymore, nowadays they routinely
allow about any company to feature a good design logo on all kind of
ridiculous items like PET bottles and so on.

~~~
hudibras
These don't seem so bad to me:
[http://ns3ns.muji.co.jp/store/cmdty/detail/4547315758371?rec...](http://ns3ns.muji.co.jp/store/cmdty/detail/4547315758371?rec=09)

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leeoniya
[http://blog.paloo.fr/index.php/posts/la-projection-de-
fuller...](http://blog.paloo.fr/index.php/posts/la-projection-de-fuller-
dymaxion-map)

~~~
eternalban
[http://narukawa-lab.jp/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/3d3ed89938...](http://narukawa-lab.jp/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/3d3ed899386741e60c805518b6919367.png)

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vitno
I haven't calculated the distortions yet, nor found anyone who has, but I'm
guessing it's inferior to dymaxion or waterman, plus it cuts out a little bit
of the map to make it fold right.

However, it's a RECTANGLE, that's huge. that means we can use it on screens
and that non-map geeks would be OK with it.

------
wott
Okaaay... I find this map is a _terrible_ design in several obvious ways
(obvious as hurting _my_ eyes in a matter of seconds).

* Blue colour for lands. No comment...

* Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring useless oceans.

* Then the remaining of the central space is occupied by the largest countries: very little information there.

* The most interesting parts, i.e. where there are plenty of small countries with fancy borders (hence mostly Europe and Africa, followed by Near-East and South America) are rejected to the side.

* To add insult to injury, those parts are the most slanted and twisted.

* Finally, there are no axes clearly remarkable, no North, no South clearly identifiable, which should be the basis of describing a planetary globe. The deformations and transformations discard or at least hide every easy bit of information, no orientation is immediately possible.

~~~
Mz
_Most space, and especially the main one: center, is occupied by boring
useless oceans._

Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean. This map cleverly is centered
on Japan, the country that awarded the design. It appears to be fairly well
proportioned and to not weirdly distort land masses that are typically wildly
distorted, such as Greenland and Antarctica.

~~~
sangnoir
> Most of the world is, in fact, covered by ocean

That doesn't mean the ocean has to be given prominence on a map, the same way
documentaries are not dominated by silent wide shots "because most of the time
nothing interesting is happening".

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Chinjut
The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative
areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-
area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area).

It's of note that there are some ways in which a flat map can never accurately
represent a spherical geometry; for example, not even any small patch of a
globe can be represented on a flat map with all distances kept faithful.

ETA: I shouldn't be so quickly dismissive, perhaps; it's also noted that this
"AuthaGraph" map has certain tiling properties I'll have to think about
further.

~~~
kuschku
It tiles, so it can be used for web maps, you can just rotate it slightly and
always have it north-pointing, so it can be used for mobile maps, and it shows
the world in an equal view. And it doesn’t distort the shape of continents
either, only the composition.

This is amazing.

~~~
ant6n
What do you mean the continents are not distorted. South America looks pretty
distorted to me, so does Australia.

~~~
kuschku
A lot less than on Mercator, which is the only other projection with the same
properties.

~~~
ant6n
Mercator is not area-preserving. It's angle preserving. It's perfect for
things like Google Maps, because no matter where you zoom in, a small
geographical area will not be distorted. It will merely be represented at a
different scale. When zoomed in, there are no distortions using Mercator.

~~~
kuschku
Correct. Which this one does well enough, too, at the scales required for web
maps.

Which makes this very awesome.

------
readams
Cutting the map in the Pacific just makes a lot more sense rather than cutting
it in the Atlantic. Do we really need most of the space in the middle of the
map to be water?

~~~
csa
This is a fairly standard practice for maps that are targeted for users in
Japan, Korea, and China (perhaps other counties as well).

I'm not sure about the why. Maybe because it puts the target countries more
towards the center of the map rather than the periphery?

~~~
mistermumble
A relatively small circle in SouthEast Asia, with center in North Vietnam will
include the majority of the world's population:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07/map-
more-than-half-of-humanity-lives-within-this-circle/)

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vacri
If you want to dynamically see how projection affects shapes, check out the
Mercator Puzzle Redux (the original seems to have bitrotted). The object of
the puzzle is to match the countries to their real locations, and it
demonstrates the distortions as you drag the countries around.

[https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-
redux/](https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/)

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ponyous
Does anybody have a link to a high-quality image?

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intangible
I'm a little late to this post, but found a talk about this projection by the
creator (good English subtitles):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQtLASlDKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQtLASlDKE)

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idlewords
It's delightful to see a world map that doesn't turn Antarctica into some
weird sliced-up monster.

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rmzn
It might be a good design work, but why does half of Sahalin island and Kuril
islands which are the territories owned by Russia are marked as Japanese here.
I wonder if this work would win the prize if those territories disputed only
by Japan would be marked as Russian.

------
mxfh
The projection seems closely related to some examples which use a Tetrahedron
as projection surface. But according to the description of the process they
used some sort of sub-tiled _Triakis tetrahedron_ [1] as intermediate
projection surface. This "inflation" process then rounds off the original
tetraeders edges and mitigates maximum angle distortion to the four corners of
the tetraeder, which can be conveniently placed in places where they are far
way from land masses to distort.

To get the rectangular final shape one of the 4 triangular-surfaces is split
into two and rotated to the neighboring sides. (Much like that one triangle
south of Australia on a _Dymaxion map_ )

Tetrahedric class projections:

conformal:

\- Lee Tetrahedric projection

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Miscellaneous/Lee_Confo...](http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Miscellaneous/Lee_Conformal_Tetrahedric.pdf)

\- Snyder's Tetrahedron (Conformal)

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetra...](http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetrahedron_Conformal.pdf)

equal-area:

\- Snyder's Tetrahedron (Equal-Area)

\--
[https://www.mapthematics.com/ProjectionsList.php?Projection=...](https://www.mapthematics.com/ProjectionsList.php?Projection=217)

\-- [http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetra...](http://www.csiss.org/map-
projections/Polyhedral_Globes/Tetrahedron_Equal_area.pdf)

gnomonic:

\- including a primer on _Tetrahedral Pseudoglobes_ by Carlos A. Furuti

\-- on prognos.com (currently unreachable)
[http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldo...](http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/Tetrahedron/tetrahedron.html)

\-- cached:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150322140625/http://www.progon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150322140625/http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Foldout/Tetrahedron/tetrahedron.html)

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

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Tempest1981
There's something interesting about seeing Africa and South America beside
Europe/Asia/North America, instead of above them.

------
bluenose69
Um, not such a sensible map for South Americans...

~~~
SwellJoe
Why not?

~~~
bluenose69
Sorry, I was looking at it improperly.

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SeanLuke
It seems to me that Brazil would not find this to be a good design.

~~~
sparky1990
Surprised I couldn't find it on Amazon. Any idea if there is a non-Japanese
retailer?

------
ChrisArchitect
Reminds of a classic West Wing moment with CJ and maps...

------
IgorPartola
Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

~~~
moogly
Hopefully one day the creator of xkcd will make a comic strip about how xkcd
references are, in fact, not obligatory.

~~~
jessaustin
If he does, it will only remain amusing for a couple of days...

~~~
IgorPartola
I think it will just become the default reply to someone posting the
Obligatory link.

Also, I regret nothing!

