For our client GEO we made a graphic which was published today (Jul 23, 2010). It shows an imaginary continent that would exist if all land mass was squished together parallel to the equator and then sorted by surface type—forests, grasslands, farmland, cities, among others.

For the surface type, we used data from the GLCF and then applied our own projection method after adding some sorting algorithms to it. So again: thanks to ActionScript and AlivePDF!

The newest customer magazine from PricewaterhouseCoopers features two Infographics made by Golden Section Graphics. One of them consists of a world map which uses the Fuller Projection, a.k.a Dymaxion Map.

If you cut the map out and glue the edges together, you get a nice paper globe.

It’s surrounded by lots of triangles, each one representing a nation of the world. Inside each of those triangles, there is a small bar chart with five bars. The values are different indexes on sustainability, like energy efficiency and carbon footprint.

Both the map and the triangles are generated with AlivePDF, the ActionScript 3 Open-Source PDF Library. The vector graphics were then processed in Adobe Illustrator.

This projection is based on the equirectangular projection, meaning that all areas between earth’s 360 meridians and 180 latitude circles are displayed as squares equal in size. But, in reality, the corresponding area near the equator is different to one near one of the poles (at the poles, it’s actually triangles). The Schwochow-Blickle Projection shows this fact with the squares getting smaller towards the poles, which are arranged on two lines parallel to the equator at the top and the bottom.

This was generated with a simple word map that was converted to a PDF with Adobe FlashBuilder and AlivePDF. No manual aligning and/or scaling done here!

Without the space in between the squares, one gets this picture: