Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain are a pair of young Brazilian artists, working in their home country and in France. Some of their work explores fonts and maps. Typography meets cartography in this little work, entitled ‘The World, Justified’.
It shows the world we live in as only one of four possibilities, the others being a left-aligned, centred and right-aligned world. Our world is a justified one, i.e. aligned with both left and right margins.
One could make all sorts of geophilosophical comments about these alternate possibilities. Or about the fact that the world we live in is neither left, right nor centre, but ‘justified’. Could it really be that, as Voltaire’s Candide asserted, tout va pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles (’Everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds’)?
Many thanks to Eric Angelini for sending in this map, found in its original context at the aforementioned artists’ website, detanicolain.com (click on the red line).
It would be interesting to see this in a non-Mercator projection (ie. Greenland smaller than Australia, etc.)
Comment by Leo Petr — September 23, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
[...] 310 – The World, Justified « Strange Maps From Strange Maps, cartography meets typography as a pair of Brazilian designers explore what the world would look like left- or right-aligned. (tags: visualisation maps) [...]
Pingback by brelson.com » links for 2008-09-23 — September 23, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
Very interesting! This team was one of half a dozen proposing projects for a work of art for the façade of our local library. Our community board, of which I’m a member, was the initiator and funder of the project, and I handled the preparation of the slide shows for the jury. Their project was my personal favorite, but in the end, another project, also excellent, was chosen.
Their project was based on typography, with a reinterpretation of the Braille alphabet, spelling out the word “disparition” (disappearance), and important word in the work of Georges Perec, in whose honor the work was to be designed.
Comment by Marc Naimark — September 23, 2008 @ 5:34 pm
that is amazing but annoying because I was working on a project similar but I needed to simplify it! Good work guys.
Comment by jonathanjk — September 23, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
Leo Petr’s comment about projection is spot-on. The Mercator projection dramatically distorts relative sizes, making areas near the poles appear much larger than they actually are. To my eyes, this effect is most noticeable in the centered justification, which makes obvious the extent to which the Mercator projection amplifies the disparity of the relative sizes between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Comment by alexbasson — September 23, 2008 @ 8:13 pm
Can you really call the first image “justified”? In word processors I’ve used, justified means lined up at both margins, not neither margin, with extra spacing distributed between each pair of consecutive words to pad things out. What would the analogy for that be on a map?
The answer depends on another question, of marginal interest: at any given latitude, how many distinct segments of land and sea are there? Obviously near the poles there’s only one segment: all-sea to the north, all-land to the south. At many other latitudes it’s two or three land (Americas, AfroEurasia, and possibly Australia). Latitudes crossing island multiply the figure. When you consider coastlines that wind back and forth, it becomes too complicated to be worth considering.
Comment by mollymooly — September 23, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
The quote from Candide is out of context—Voltaire was making fun of the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Comment by victorg — September 23, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
Interesting project, but the shapes that result are strictly a result of the projection you used (larger at the “top”, etc.)
If you were to use a more appropriate projection, you might get better results.
Comment by Carter — September 23, 2008 @ 9:50 pm
[...] I think I’m in love with Strange Maps. Check out The World, Justified. [...]
Pingback by Happy Bisexual Pride Day! « By Erin Ptah — September 23, 2008 @ 10:16 pm
As I work in the publishing (in french, sorry for my english), I liked this vision of the «Justified World».
Being «a centrist», I prefer the map with the centred lines. The left and right form the same image seen in a mirror. However, the map with the centred lines looks like a Rorschach Test.
What that wants to say, Doctor?
PS – I agree with comments on the of Mercator projection.
Comment by Dela Lama — September 23, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
[...] The World, Justified: It shows the world we live in as only one of four possibilities, the others being a left-aligned, centred and right-aligned world. Our world is a justified one, i.e. aligned with both left and right margins. (via Daring Fireball) [...]
Pingback by eclecticism » Blog Archive » Links for September 23rd from 10:22 to 15:40 — September 24, 2008 @ 12:00 am
[...] Strange Maps features the artwork of Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, who span the fields of typography and cartography and find that our world is not left-aligned nor right-aligned, nor even centered. The world is justified. Innovative. [...]
Pingback by ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Typography meets cartography — September 24, 2008 @ 1:18 am
Where’s Antarctica? No-one ever cares about the last continent :(
Comment by ginckgo — September 24, 2008 @ 1:54 am
[...] The World, Justified–Strange Maps A great idea: the world we live in as only one of four possibilities, the others being a left-aligned, centred and right-aligned world. Our world is a justified one, i.e. aligned with both left and right margins. 0 comments [...]
Pingback by Spudart: Links — September 24, 2008 @ 8:14 am
[...] El mundo justificado, un trabajo de Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain. [...]
Pingback by Antipasto Estudio » Blog Archive » Izuierda, centro o derecha? — September 24, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
[...] commentary at best, or a shot in the dark play on words at worst. I found this image on strange maps and thought it [...]
Pingback by The World, in justified text « Becoming an Artist — September 24, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
Interesting and strange at the same time. I don’t see, right now, a use for it, but web 2.0 has a place for everything.
Comment by mcloide — September 24, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
Is it just me, or do the left and right aligned maps look like the right and left halves of Greenland respectively, and the centered version looks like the entire island of Greenland?
(I know I saw a very similar “chart”, with degrees of lattitude along the Y axis in a similar chart of the left/right aligned versions, and similar data with all the world’s landmass drawn south, and degrees of longitude along the flat X axis. (Just saw it recently, wish I could find the chart … )
Comment by David Kendall — September 24, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
Wonderful idea!
Raf Uzar
http://uzar.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/eu-ii/
Comment by Raf Uzar — September 26, 2008 @ 6:26 am
Instructions for doing this with any projection:
1. Find an image file of your desired projection.
2. Edit your image to make it monocrome (use your image editor of choice).
3. Go here to turn your image into HTML.
4. View the source of the HTML.
5. Copy the HTML code for your image and paste it into notepad.
6. Add the to the start of the first line and to the end of the last line.
7. Save this file as your original.
8. Do a replace on ‘font color=white’ and make it ‘font style=”display: none;”‘
9. Save this file as left-justified.
10. Replace the ” in the first line with ”
11. Save this file as right-justified.
12. Replace ” in the left-justified file with ‘<body style=”text-align: center;”‘.
13. Save this as center-justified.
14. ???
15. Profit.
Comment by Alex — September 27, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Some of my comment didn’t make it through.
In steps 10 and 12 I was talking about the body tag. I was saying in step 10 to add style=”text-align: right” to the body tag.
Comment by Alex — September 27, 2008 @ 10:38 am
[...] pasaulis susidėtų iš teksto eilučių ir būtų netikėtai „sucentruotas“, tai Lietuva liktų daugmaž toje pačioje vietoje. Ko nepasakytum apie žemynų lygiavimą pagal [...]
Pingback by Geografinis pasistumdymas : nežinau.lt — September 29, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
[...] What happens when you align a world map ? [...]
Pingback by Info-graphics of the week [Oct 3] | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org — October 3, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
To all the people complaining about the Mercator projection–that map’s not in Mercator projection! I think it’s just an equirectangular cylindrical, or plate carrée. You can tell because Greenland is stretched east-west but not north-south.
However, the point stands; this exercise could have been done just as easily with an equal-area projection like the Mollweide, and it would have made slightly more sense.
Comment by Matt McIrvin — October 4, 2008 @ 5:42 am
…Actually, I guess the sinusoidal projection would be best of all, since it accurately reproduces longitudinal widths at any given latitude. Unfortunately the sinusoidal is weird-looking to begin with, so people might miss the point of the exercise (to the extent that there is one) because of that.
Comment by Matt McIrvin — October 4, 2008 @ 5:45 am
[...] artists, working in their home country and in France. Some of their work explores fonts and maps. Typography meets cartography in this little work, entitled ‘The World, [...]
Pingback by The World, Justified at SOUP DU JOUR — October 9, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
[...] 310 – The World, Justified « Strange Maps (tags: world visualization visualisation typography nerd maps map image mapping humor) [...]
Pingback by The PHA : links for 2008-09-24 — October 9, 2008 @ 10:06 pm
[...] The World, Justified – [...]
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[...] 310 – The World, Justified « Strange Maps [...]
Pingback by The World, Justified « A Place For You — October 17, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
Не смог удержатся и не сообщить, что у strangemaps.wordpress.com появился еще один постоянный читатель ;).
Пишите чаще!
Comment by Станислав — October 22, 2008 @ 6:41 am
[...] Well, I’m fond of geography, so I just went crazy when I found out that very nice blog – Strange Maps. There are several maps there, maps displaying very different issues, such as the handy map of San Francisco Bay and the map of the world, justified! [...]
Pingback by Strange Maps « Man of the Bridge — November 23, 2008 @ 3:05 am
Excelent!!!
Comment by Mariana Mota — November 29, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
[...] Republished from Strange Maps. [...]
Pingback by Kelso’s Corner » Blog Archive » The World, Justified (Strange Maps) — December 4, 2008 @ 6:04 am
[...] die Welt als zentrierter, rechtsbündiger oder linksbündiger Text [...]
Pingback by “Strange Maps” « “11d nennt sich dieser Haufen!” — December 6, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
[...] Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain apply typographic alignments to the world map. via Stange Maps [...]
Pingback by Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain apply typographic alignments to… — Some Random Dude — December 26, 2008 @ 8:00 am
[...] Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain apply typographic alignments to the world map. via Stange Maps [...]
Pingback by Some Random Dude - Franklin Street » Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain apply typographic alignments to… — December 26, 2008 @ 8:55 am
thanks for this map
good
luck
….
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 9:03 am
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 5:27 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 7:51 am