How to Make a Beautiful Map

We love maps. So Fabian Ehmel and I made a beautiful butterfly world map just using open source tools and public data.

There is something weird and wonderful about analogue maps. They are increasingly useless yet incredibly beautiful. The obsessive level of detail of Ordnance Survey Maps, the typographic excellence of Swiss National Maps, the visual density of the Ebstorfer Weltkarte or the beautiful relief representations by Eduard Imhof. Old maritime maps smelling of the sea, uncharted areas, treasure maps, here be dragons. As a kid, I spend hours browsing maps and atlantes, imagining distant and secluded places. Maps evoke Wanderlust and Fernweh.

I always wanted to design my own maps. But it seemed difficult and trivial at the same time. There are already so many great maps and map styles out there — why go through all the trouble to create a variation of an existing one?

Then I discovered the Waterman Butterfly projection. And I was in love.

Butterfly Projections

All map designs face an interesting challenge: how do you turn the surface of a three-dimensional sphere into a two-dimensional plane? It is geometrically impossible to transform a globe into a flat rectangle while keeping all the spatial…