>> The Good Design Grand Award, arguably Japan’s most prestigious award for design, went out to architect Hajime Narukawa’s completely groundbreaking design for a map of the world. His map, the AuthaGraph World Map, isn’t your average map of the globe: It’s a near-perfect representation of the continents and oceans as they exist on our spherical planet, all laid out on a two-dimensional surface.<p><a href="https://totravelistolive.co/authagraph-world-map/" rel="nofollow">https://totravelistolive.co/authagraph-world-map/</a>
Africa has 54 countries, thousands of languages and 1.2 billion people.<p>As an African, whenever I see this map I'm more astonished by how densely populated Europe and India are, how big and populated China is and how homogeneous the US is compared to its size.
One of the strangest feelings I've had is flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. It's a super long trip and so mentally I was expecting jet lag. But there was no time change. The season flipped but the time of day was right in sync with everyone back home in Budapest.
Past related threads. Others?<p><i>The size of Africa, in perspective (photo)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7492708" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7492708</a> - March 2014 (1 comment)<p><i>True size of Africa</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7249832" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7249832</a> - Feb 2014 (31 comments)<p><i>The True Size of Africa - Misleading Maps</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226458" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226458</a> - Aug 2013 (101 comments)<p><i>The True Size of Africa (2010) [pdf]</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790504" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790504</a> - May 2013 (44 comments)<p><i>The True Size of Africa (infographic)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865958" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865958</a> - Nov 2010 (2 comments)<p><i>The True Size of Africa</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1789769" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1789769</a> - Oct 2010 (1 comment)<p><i>The True Size of Africa</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780004" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780004</a> - Oct 2010 (38 comments)<p><i>Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366692" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366692</a> - Nov 2008 (51 comments)
"Kai Krause" is the one of "Kai's Power Tools" ("KPT") and "Bryce" fame by the way.<p><a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause</a>
Projections can be tricky. Early memory I have in college:
I walked into my professor's office and she had a curious looking map on her wall. It had Australia at the center and the US was distorted and upside down.<p>As someone from North America (US) this was a nice lesson in perspective.
This reminds me of my favorite scene from The West Wing where they talk about how misleading the Mercator projection is with regard to the size of Africa.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI</a>
The edited title is incorrect, in that it is a comparison with <i>countries</i>. How big is Africa compared to Asia? Okay, there’s one comparison with Europe (scroll down). Otherwise it’s a matter of how many countries one could cram in there. Of course, Africa <i>already</i> has a bunch of countries, so I guess I just didn’t get it. Comparing to, say, North America or something would be a better visualization for me.
Why is the subtitle “a visual comparison with other continents” here? It’s not in the source, and the source <i>does not compare Africa visually to other continents</i> (except that one of the smaller visualizations conpares it to Europe), but to individual countries.
Reminds me of this scene:<p>Why are we changing maps? (from The West Wing) - <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI</a>
Many years ago, a family member (USian, suburban, whitebread) was dating the son of a Nigerian diplomat posted in Addis Ababa. She asked him how long a drive it was, and that's how I knew the relationship was doomed.<p>I just looked it up. Addis Ababa to Lagos is 2400 miles as the crow flies. This presumably auto-generated route planner states nearly 5000 miles driving. On day one on your drive to Lagos, it recommends 9 hours of driving and stopping in Gondar, still 3.5 hours to the Sudanese border. <a href="https://www.trippy.com/drive/Addis-Ababa-to-Lagos-Nigeria" rel="nofollow">https://www.trippy.com/drive/Addis-Ababa-to-Lagos-Nigeria</a>
This reminds me of reading about Africa's size in the introduction to Michael Crichton's Congo back when I was a kid:<p>"Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe combined. It is nearly twice the size of South America."
There are three basic choices you have with a rectangular map:<p>- Mercator, which preserves shape and direction, but not size<p>- Gall equal-area etc, which preserves size and direction, but not shape<p>- AuthaGraph, which preserves size and shape, but not direction<p>No rectangular map will ever be satisfactory, but maybe putting all three together would make a good display?<p>And then there's my stupid projection (a rip-off of August epicycloidal): <a href="https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF" rel="nofollow">https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF</a>
If you find this fascinating try the intractive version! <a href="https://thetruesize.com/" rel="nofollow">https://thetruesize.com/</a>
Off course Africa is huge. I think it takes around 9 hours by plane to get from Cape Town to Tunis. But Africa is extremely diverse, there are so many different counties and cultures.<p>What impressed me most recently, was the size of Brazil. I flew from Montevideo to Madrid and around one third of the 12 hour flight you just fly over Brazil
I don't know why, but I thought of this song when I saw "Africa."<p>Cesaria Evora - <i>Africa Nossa</i><p><a href="https://youtu.be/QH1UG6V7iiY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QH1UG6V7iiY</a>
How about an accurate rotatable 3 dimensional map using the puzzle piece idea? I’m not skilled at 3d animation but I bet a talented artist could do it fairly easily.
I remember flying to Munich once from Cape Town and a German colleague guessed the flight was three to four hours. I said no, it was over eleven hours and he was shocked. I laughed and told him to check out a globe sometime - not a map - so he could trace for himself how massive Africa really is. The surface area of the moon is only 20% larger.