Some Recent Magazines and a Book

For your amusement, a smattering of recent magazine and book covers using maps as an element of their design.

From The Nation: President Obama must decide on future American involvement in Afghanistan.



Stores Magazine suggests that Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico (VIM?) are the countries to watch for new muscle in emerging markets.



Time believes that California, in spite of being "an apocalyptic mess of raging wildfires, soaring unemployment, mass foreclosures and political paralysis," is still the future of American innovation and growth.





Finally, in his book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, Ethan Waters maps out the way the United States shapes the expression of mental illness around the globe.

Have You Hugged Your Planet Today?

The perfect piece of décor for the fashionable cartophile's living room sofa. A real globe but soft. Twelve inches in diameter, accurate and up-to-date. It's the classic Hugg-A-Planet Earth:



For all you Men From Mars, your own Hugg-A-Planet Mars:



Sorry ladies, no Hugg-A-Planet Venus.

HT to Hunter

Icosahedron Earth

Check out the latest post at Black Maps wherein the Sunshine Superboy goes on about Bucky, Tattoos, and New Cartographic Directions and various attempts to "peel" the Earth and create a flat map with minimal distortion. Among the projections featured is the Dymaxion Map by Buckminster Fuller



Further reading on the topic led me to the Earth Icosahedron* cut-out project found on the Views of the Solar System website:


Click on image for larger view

Within about 15 minutes, I had cut-out and assembled my own Icosahedron Earth:



*Dungeons & Dragons players: Think d20.

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Cardboard World

Driving around town this weekend, I had to pull over and take a picture of this company's sign:



Cardboardy Earth goodness.

Don't Worry, Be Cool

Today I noticed the cover of the 11 July issue of The Spectator magazine. The illustration shows the planet Earth enjoying the sunshine without a care in the world (sort of like my vacation last week) I couldn't find a complete image of the cover online, but here are two bits...

In the cover story, "Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick"

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book

I'm not going to argue about global warming here (take it to some other blog). I'll just post this link and image from The Guardian's rebuttal: "Spectator recycles climate rubbish published by sceptic"

How to Fix the World

The July/August 2009 issue of The Atlantic magazine is "The Ideas Issue": How to Fix the World

Ideas include: Privatize the seas, welcome guest workers, scrap the vice presidency, teach teens to drink and buy a better quality super glue.

Lego Globe

Kohsuke Kawaguchi, staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, used a LEGO CAD software to design, then build a Lego Globe:

[T]his globe is fully filled inside without any empty space. I built 8 pieces of 6x6x5 brick (because of the dimensions of a lego brick, this is the perfect cube), with 3 1x4 brick with studs on the side, so that when assembled together, the resulting cubic core has studs in all the directions. I'm actually not quite happy with the result, as many of the distinctive northern hemisphere coastal shapes are no longer visible, but Africa and South America are still quite recognizable.

He's already working on an even bigger one!

HT to Lance!

HelpPoint for Kids

Somehow, playing a sort of online golf game on HelpPoint for Kids will raise money for children's charities.



Unfortunately, the only way to raise this money is for me, and 18 of my close personal friends, to give some insurance company our contact info. No thanks. But the golf ball globe is very cool!

If anyone actually registers and can report back, please post in the comments.

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Tibetan Monks and Mandalas

All last week, a group of Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Drepung Gomang Monastic College in India, were at the Dayton Metro Library creating a sand mandala.



The finished product:



with a MAP of sorts in the center:



and, as Buddhism teaches, all things are impermanent. After it was finished they swept up all the sand, carried it out of the library and spread it on the river.

More photos here, here and here.

UPDATE 5/20: Ron created this video showing some of the detail work:

Food Matters

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes by Mark Bittman:



An apple a day keeps the world's problems at bay?

Bittman offers a no-nonsense rundown on how government policy, big business marketing, and global economics influence what we choose to put on the table each evening. He demystifies buzzwords like "organic," "sustainable," and "local" and offers straightforward, budget-conscious advice that will help you make small changes that will shrink your carbon footprint -- and your waistline.

Other examples of apples in maps and maps on apples.

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Science and the Global Squeeze

In the current global recession, scientists must learn how to tighten their belts...

Nature, February 19, 2009, "Recession Watch: How to survive the recession".

"The global economic downturn brings both predicament and promise. How will science fare and what role should scientists play on the long road back to recovery and growth? Ten of the world's leading thinkers and practitioners provide analysis, experience and advice."

Twittervision

Hey, I'm fairly tech savvy... For an old guy, I'm into a lot of this "Web 2.0" stuff. I blog don't I? I'm on Facebook... but I still don't get the whole Twitter thing... Why exactly do I want to spend time on yet another social networking site, posting about what I watched on TV today, what size coffee I ordered, or the weather? Even worse, why would I want to read anyone else's Twits? Don't I waste enough time already?

So, on Facebook, my friend, Hunter, posted this article from the Zen Habits blog: A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly. The article's advice is: Try it, you'll get used to it... OK, that's the same advice I was offered when encouraged to begin smoking... However, another friend, Matt, pointed out that Twittervision 3D, mentioned in the article, is very cool. I must concede that point:



Jaxsomethingerother, from Jackonsville, Florida, appears to be mocking his friends up north for their recent cold spell...

Twittervision is a real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. 3D is apparently the latest update to the original flat map application:



Yes! Now that was... not very interesting.

Except for the cool maps, I cannot say I'm sold yet on Twitter.

Giant Map and Globe Fun

How about a giant globe toy to go with your map rug?



From the folks at The Conran Shop: "Give your children the world! This giant cloth globe comes with a set of 181 Velcro-attachable felt motifs, including famous landmarks, animals and figures in national costume which can be placed anywhere on the globe."

(Thanks Tony!)

Speaking of giant maps... National Geographic has Giant Traveling Maps! Coming to a school near you...



Via Contours - The National Geographic Maps Blog

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Happy Halloween!

Great pumpkin carving ideas from the Coyote Blog

Inflating The Week

One of my favorite magazines is The Week. I enjoy it, not only because it is an informative digest of national and international news and opinions, but also because I can count on them to include maps on their covers on a regular basis!

Here we see the October 24, 2008, issue.

Other recent examples of maps on The Week can be seen here and here.

We call it Maze

If it is autumn, it must be time for a corn maze!

Cornfieldmaze.com can help you find a corn maze near you. Here are two of the more interesting looking ones:



It's got a globe!



However, my favorite will always be Tom's Maze near Germantown, Ohio:



Tom Eby doesn't just cut a maze-path through his cornfield, he actually plans it all winter and then plants it that way in the Spring. His mazes aren't just an excuse to make a pretty picture for the airplanes, they are actually a challenging puzzle. Find your way in, find the clues in each of twelve sections of the maze, and find your way out. Bring a friend.

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Magazine Roundup

Time for another sampling of maps on magazine covers:

	The Week September 19, 2008 Sarah Palin is having an impact on the election and nation... or is she tearing it apart?
New Scientist September 6, 2008 Talk about your global warming...
	Tikkun July August 2008 What? Do you think new worlds grow on trees?
New Yorker October 6, 2008 Revisiting the classic "View of the World from Ninth Avenue" cover, a "View of Russia from Gov. Palin's Office." For a larger version of this map, see: Strange Maps.

World of Apples

This map of the world is one of many works of art made from thousands of apples at the Apple Festival in Kivik, Sweden.



Via Damn Cool Pics

New New and News Maps on Magazines

Magazine cover designers never disappoint me. I can always count on a map or two every month. This month I present magazines with the word "New" or "News" in their title. How about that?

The New Republic August 13, 2008 Cover story: Trading Places by Alan Ehrenhalt The demographic inversion of the American city. The tiny image here does not do the cover justice, but it depicts the new "heart" of cities that are revitalizing, in the style of a transit map.

Two maps from the New Scientist magazine in one month! First, August 6, 2008, another transit map is used to illustrate the story by Mark Buchanan on Why complex systems do better without us

The August 20, 2008, issue fills a water balloon globe to illustrate: Looming water crisis simply a management problem, by Jonathan Chenoweth For another cover on this theme, see Squeezing out the last drops, my magazine post from earlier this month.

Finally, the September 2008 issue of ARTnews uses a map tatoo of China to introduce us to China's Art Market Boom by Barbara Pollack

Libros en Español

The beginning of my recent trip to Mexico was marred by flight delays and cancellations. I ended up stuck in the Indianapolis airport for nearly eight hours, and by the time I reached Dallas I had already finished the several magazines I brought along as reading material. At the Dallas airport I picked up a copy of Carl Hiaasen's latest novel, Nature Girl. Adventure, revenge and humor in the Florida Everglades; I recommend his work for light, fun reading.

That book lasted for a few days in Cuernavaca, but by the time we reached Mexico City, I had to go looking for bookstores. Generally, I cannot visit another city or country without checking out the bookstores anyway... but now I needed something to read, and in English! Most of the new book stores I found had very little in English, but then I found a street full of used book stores, only a few blocks away from the hotel. I was now in librarian/book lover heaven. Eventually I settled on a big fat hardback book, Mexico, by James Michener. The author started this book in 1961, and picked it up and finished it thirty years later. Perhaps he should have left it on the shelf. While, as with most of Michener's work, it is steeped with history, I found the characters thin and clichéd. But worst of all TOO MUCH BULLFIGHTING! More than anything else, the book was about the culture of bullfighting in 1961. It might have made a good chapter. But at least it was something to read, to keep my eyes and hands busy in the evening, or on long bus rides.

Enough about books I'm reading, what does this have to do with maps? While in the several Mexico City new book stores, my eyes were drawn to several book covers that used maps in their design. Two of them are illustrating this post. El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror) by Carlos Fuentes and Breve Historia del Mundo (Brief History of the World) by Ernest H. Gombrich.

Map lovers can be found around the world. It is a universal language.

Maps On The Brain

A selection of recent publications with maps on the cover:

A book:

The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain by George Lakoff

The author attempts to explain why a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests.



Some magazines:





The cover of this issue of The New Yorker (June 23, 2008) features cover art, “Summer Job”, by Bruce McCall.

If you cannot make out the detail, it fancifully depicts bears checking in and out of the "Employees Entrance" at a National Park, while the tourist are reminded, "No picnicing in Buffalo Wallows."

If you look very closely, you can see that, yes indeed, there is a map! A "You Are Here" map of the park for the tourists.

This cover reminds me of the old Warner Brothers Cartoon where Ralph the wolf and Sam the sheepdog clock in, as buddies, before battling over the sheep.



“Subway Man”, by Roz Chast, graces the June 30 issue of The New Yorker. A stressed out commuter IS the transit map of Manhattan.

Finally, the June 21, 2008, issue of the New Scientist magazine features a very hot looking planet Earth, for a cover story on global warming.


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Plates and Babies

Two more examples of maps and globes in magazine cover design.

This issue of American Heritage is from last year. It makes clever use of old automobile license plates to create a map of the United States.

The current issue of Reason Magazine uses a globe.

Anytime a magazine talks about a "global" issue, they like to put a globe on the cover... but I like the combination of the baby and the globe. The article highlights the problem that many developed nations perceive, declining birth-rates. Yet in other parts of the world (China, India) there remain attempts to control population growth?

Didn't Paul Ehrlich predict a huge world-wide crash in the 1980s because of the population explosion?


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