Tagged: world

Detail of a masonry relief with a world map, on which a part of Africa and adjacent oceans is visible

A World Map Made of Bricks

I have used many different materials to create world maps: from rusty steel to toilet paper and from stained glass to coffee beans. But a typical Dutch material was missing until now: brick. Time to fill that gap with a masonry relief. History The use of brick is not a recent phenomenon. The Mesopotamians used it five thousand years ago, as did the Romans a few millennia later. In the Netherlands, brick has been used as a building material since the thirteenth century. It’s not surprising that we have such a tradition of brick in this country. Apart from the… Read More

world map made of scrapwood, old planks, plywood and othe recycled material

The Scrapwood World Map

The scrapwood map the the provinces of the Netherlands was the most popular item in my Dutch webshop in 2018. That does not mean that the map is decorating walls in hundreds of living rooms, but it is still a modest success for this piece of virtual recycling. The World After this achievement, I just had to make a world map in scrapwood as well and here it is… Just like the map of the Netherlands it was rendered in 3ds Max using digital scaffolding, plywood, planks, slats, floorboards and rusty nails. The colors and textures were chosen quite randomly.… Read More

A world map according to the Antarctic or Penguin projection, with the southpole in the middle and increasingly dramatic distortions towards the north

The Antarctic Projection: a Penguin’s World Map

For us humans, a world map centered around the South Pole doesn’t make much sense. But for a penguin cartographer, such an Antarctic projection is the only way to go. It shows how much a world map tells about the person who has made it, or about the market it is made for. Here in Europe, we think it’s only logical to place the edge of the map in the Bering Strait and the Pacific. After all, there is almost nobody living there and besides: this way we put ourselves nicely in the middle. The Amero-centric world map People in… Read More

The inverted world map where land and sea have been swapped; continents are oceans, islands are lakes and the other way around, in colors inspired by NASA's Blue Marble imagery

The Inverted World Map – Variations on a Blue Marble

It probably happens to everyone who likes to look at maps. You imagine land to be water and water to be land. Continents to be oceans and and oceans to be continents. Islands to be lakes and lakes to be islands. An inverted world map. I could not resist the temptation to make a detailed map of such a topsy-turvy world. But I am not the first to do so. A little bit of googling yields a nice collection of inverted maps. Vladislav Gerasimov, for example, made a lovely styled fantasy map. And Chris Wajan on his Panetocopia website extensively… Read More

Splendid isolation: the British Isles as if they were alone on a planet

English: a Global Language

In December 2013 I started my company 3Develop as well as my own website. Less than a month later I also launched the English version of the site. After all, the world is my homeland and English is the world language. My international ambitions were not without consequences. In early 2015, I spent two weeks in Watford, England, working on visualizations for St. Mary’s Church. And the English version of my blog post about the Inverted World Map is by far the most popular page on my website. Splendid isolation To celebrate the launch of my English website I made… Read More