Often, it’s the simplest of ideas that works. And more often than not, it’s a question posed, that can be answered by a simple map. So if the question is where would you draw a line across England and Wales so that 50% of the population is to the north, and 50% to the south […]
Maps of the Turkey/Syria Earthquakes
On 6th February 2023 two large earthquakes hit southern and central Turkey, and northern Syria. They measured approximately 7.5 and 7.8 on the Moment-magnitude scale, and led to massive loss of life, and property. At the time of writing it’s been a week since these catastrophic events, and the images of destruction, and unbearable loss […]
The last 747
Map of the week for the first week of February 2023 is not really a map in the sense that someone made a map, but the way we saw what emerged from an event was across a map, and the tool of production was pretty impressive. The first few months of 1969 were quite something […]
Tis the season to be snowy
USGS recently published a map of snow cover index for the coterminous US. They could have just gone with a standard depiction showing a raster coverage with some sort of colour gradient to show low to high. Job done. Except they didn’t. They binned the data into hexagons (the de rigueur choice for binning) and […]
Nazi Treasure Map
Who doesn’t like a good old fashioned treasure map with a classic ‘x marks the spot’ showing where the treasure is buried? National Archives in the Netherlands has released documents including a map that allegedly shows the location of a haul of stolen treasures looted by Nazi troops, and buried in April 1945, near Ommeren […]
Californian lightning
Just a small animated map I saw on Twitter is this week’s map of the week. Colin McCarthy posted this small map of this week’s devastating storms approaching the Californian coast. The coalescing of electrical storm activity as it approaches shore is somewhat hypnotic.
UK Climate Summary
This fantastic infographic of the 2022 UK climate summary (compared to the previous 30 year aveerages) caught my eye by Neil Kaye. It’s essentially an example of using small multiples where each individual map is really only important in the context of the collection of maps. It’s the sequence that tells the story. The maps […]
Favourite maps of 2022
Hello friends, Here is my annual selection of favourite maps that I’ve seen this past year. They’re in no particular order, and I’ve most likely missed a load but here goes… and don’t forget to click on the links to go to the originals. I hope I’ve attributed maps correctly but if there’s any errors […]
Yet another new design for an old map
There’s a large underground group of people who assert that the London Underground map is no longer fit for purpose and simply relies on its lauded history as a descendent of Harry Beck’s magnificent 1933 original. I’m one of those people. In 2019 I created a totally new design for the map (blogs here and […]
It’s not a tube map
May 2022, some 90 years since Henry ‘Harry’ Beck designed his famous ‘Map of London’s Underground Railways’, and the latest incarnation has been released here. It’s now called the ‘Tube Map’ except it’s anything but a map of the tube network. I’m a huge fan of Beck’s original design. Borrowing heavily from other transport maps […]