Top 10 World Map Projections
It may come as a surprise to hear that there is no truly correct way of representing the Earth as a flat image.
The Earth is a three-dimensional globe, and flattening its curved surface inevitably introduces distortion. Every world map projection must make choices about what to preserve and what to sacrifice: the size of countries, their shapes, distances, directions, or the overall appearance of the world.
These choices have fascinated cartographers for centuries. Some projections were developed for navigation, others for scientific accuracy, and some simply offer a beautiful and thought-provoking alternative view of our planet.
In no particular order, here are ten of our favourite world map projections.
1. Mercator
Developed by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, this projection was designed to make navigation at sea easier. Its great advantage is that lines of constant compass bearing appear as straight lines, allowing sailors to plot a course across the oceans.
The Mercator projection became enormously popular and was subsequently used for general world maps and in classrooms, despite its considerable distortion of land area. The further you travel from the equator, the more exaggerated the scale becomes. Greenland, for example, appears comparable in size to Africa, when Africa is actually around fourteen times larger.
Mercator remains a remarkable and useful projection for its intended purpose, but it is a reminder that a map designed for one task may not be the best choice for another.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
2. Robinson
The Robinson projection is known as a compromise projection. Rather than preserving one particular property perfectly, it aims to create a visually balanced representation of the whole world.
Arthur Robinson developed it in 1963 through a process of visual experimentation, adjusting the shapes and proportions until he arrived at a map that he felt looked right. Its gently curved meridians and rounded outline give it a familiar, almost spherical appearance.
Neither country shapes nor areas are entirely accurate, but the distortion is distributed in a way that makes the map particularly effective for general reference. It is perhaps one of the best examples of cartography as both a science and an art.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
Our Classic World Map uses the Robinson projection. It is a contemporary tribute to the familiar schoolroom map, combining detailed geography with a colourful, modern design that is equally at home in a living room, study or classroom.
Available in four colourways, view the Classic World Map and choose your favourite.
3. Dymaxion Map
The Dymaxion Map was developed by the inventor and designer R. Buckminster Fuller, with the best-known version published in 1954.
Rather than projecting the world onto a cylinder or a conventional flat surface, Fuller projected it onto an icosahedron—a twenty-sided geometric solid—which can then be unfolded into a flat map. The result is an extraordinary arrangement of continents that can be presented in several different orientations.
Fuller wanted to challenge the idea that a world map should have a fixed “right way up”. His arrangement also emphasises the connections between the continents, presenting the Earth’s landmasses as something closer to one continuous island surrounded by ocean.
It is a projection that encourages us to look beyond the familiar arrangement of north at the top and the Atlantic in the middle, and to reconsider how the world fits together.
Image - Justin Kunimune
4. Gall-Peters
The Gall-Peters projection is a cylindrical equal-area projection, meaning that it preserves the relative surface areas of countries and continents. Africa, South America and other regions are therefore shown in their correct proportions relative to the rest of the world.
The projection was described by James Gall in 1855 and later popularised by Arno Peters in the 1970s. Peters promoted it as an alternative to Mercator, arguing that conventional world maps gave an exaggerated visual prominence to countries in the northern latitudes.
Its equal-area property comes with a substantial compromise: shapes are stretched vertically near the equator and compressed towards the poles. The result is a world that can look unfamiliar, but which makes the relationship between the sizes of different landmasses much clearer.
Gall-Peters demonstrates that correcting one kind of distortion does not eliminate distortion altogether—it simply changes the choices the map makes.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
5. Equal Earth
Equal Earth is one of the newest projections in our selection, designed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny.
Like Gall-Peters, it is an equal-area projection, preserving the correct relative sizes of countries and continents. However, its curved meridians and rounded outline create a more natural-looking world, avoiding much of the extreme stretching associated with cylindrical equal-area maps.
The projection has attracted renewed attention following a United Nations General Assembly resolution on 4 September 2026, which endorsed wider use of Equal Earth. The resolution, supported by 164 countries, encourages maps that represent the relative sizes of landmasses more accurately, particularly in education, media and digital platforms. It does not ban Mercator or require every map to use Equal Earth.
The discussion has brought an important cartographic question into the public eye: what should a general-purpose world map prioritise? Equal Earth makes a compelling case for preserving area, while compromise projections such as Robinson and Winkel Tripel continue to offer different advantages in the balance between size, shape and overall appearance.
For us, that is what makes the subject so interesting. There is no single projection that answers every question, and Equal Earth is a welcome addition to the many ways we can explore and understand our planet.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
6. Sinu-Mollweide
Developed by Allen K. Philbrick in 1953, the Sinu-Mollweide projection combines two earlier equal-area projections: the Sinusoidal and the Mollweide.
The result is a striking, almost heart-shaped world map that preserves the relative areas of landmasses while presenting the continents in a very different arrangement from the familiar rectangular world map.
Its unusual outline creates a strong graphic impression, and the way the continents appear to nestle together can bring to mind the ancient supercontinent Pangaea. It is a wonderful example of how a change in projection can make familiar geography feel entirely new.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
Our Wide Angle World Map uses the Sinu-Mollweide projection. We love its distinctive bird’s-eye view of the globe and the way it brings the world’s landmasses together into one bold composition.
Originally printed to celebrate our fifth anniversary, it has since become a popular part of our main collection. See the Wide Angle World Map in its full glory.
Our Wide Angle World Map uses the Sinu-Mollweide projection. We love its distinctive bird’s-eye view of the globe and the way it brings the world’s landmasses together into one bold composition.
Originally printed to celebrate our fifth anniversary, it has since become a popular part of our main collection. You can explore the Wide Angle World Map here.
Developed by John Paul Goode in 1923, the Homolosine projection combines the Sinusoidal and Mollweide projections to create an equal-area map of the world.
Its most distinctive feature is the use of interruptions, usually placed through the oceans. These breaks allow the continents to retain more natural shapes while preserving their correct relative areas.
The effect is often compared to peeling an orange and laying the skin flat. By cutting the surface in carefully chosen places, it becomes possible to reduce some of the distortion that would otherwise occur.
The price, of course, is that the oceans are divided and the map no longer presents the world as one continuous surface. It is particularly useful for maps where the distribution of land-based information is more important than uninterrupted ocean geography.
7. Goode’s Homolosine.
Developed by John Paul Goode in 1923, the Homolosine projection combines the Sinusoidal and Mollweide projections to create an equal-area map of the world.
Its most distinctive feature is the use of interruptions, usually placed through the oceans. These breaks allow the continents to retain more natural shapes while preserving their correct relative areas.
The effect is often compared to peeling an orange and laying the skin flat. By cutting the surface in carefully chosen places, it becomes possible to reduce some of the distortion that would otherwise occur.
The price, of course, is that the oceans are divided and the map no longer presents the world as one continuous surface. It is particularly useful for maps where the distribution of land-based information is more important than uninterrupted ocean geography.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
8. Cylindrical Equal Area Projection
The cylindrical equal-area family of projections uses straight, parallel lines of longitude and latitude to represent the world on a rectangular map.
Unlike Mercator, these projections preserve the correct relative areas of countries and continents. They achieve this by changing the spacing of the lines of latitude, compensating for the fact that the meridians do not converge towards the poles as they do on a globe.
The resulting shapes can be surprising, particularly at high latitudes, but the projection offers a fascinating alternative to more conventional world maps. It invites us to reconsider the proportions of the continents and the visual assumptions we have grown accustomed to.
There are several variations within the cylindrical equal-area family, each with a different balance of shape distortion.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
Our Future Map range uses a cylindrical equal-area projection, creating a bold and contemporary alternative to the traditional world map. Its distinctive proportions and graphic character make it a particularly striking piece of wall art.
Take a closer look at our Future World Map and see how this alternative view translates into our signature colour and print finishes.
9. Peirce Quincuncial
The Peirce Quincuncial projection is one of the most unusual and mathematically inventive ways of representing the world. Developed by the American philosopher, logician and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce in the 1870s, it transforms the globe into a square.
In its familiar arrangement, the North Pole sits at the centre, while the South Pole is divided between the four corners. The continents radiate outwards in a wonderfully unexpected composition, creating a world map that looks almost like a piece of geometric art.
The name “quincuncial” refers to the arrangement of five points, like the five on a dice: one in the centre and four at the corners. This geometry gives the projection its most remarkable property—the square can be repeated in every direction to create a seamless, continuous pattern of the world.
Its Arctic-centred view also feels surprisingly relevant today. With renewed interest in Greenland’s strategic position, Arctic resources and northern shipping routes, the projection brings the relationships between North America, Europe and Russia into focus in a way that conventional world maps rarely do.
Peirce’s projection is conformal almost everywhere, meaning that it preserves local angles and small shapes, although it has four singular points where this property breaks down. It does not preserve area, but its mathematical elegance and unusual arrangement make it a fascinating alternative to conventional world maps.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
Our Peirce Quincuncial World Map was introduced to celebrate twenty years of The Future Mapping Company. Its distinctive square format and intricate geography make it one of the most individual maps in our collection.
Available in paper, plastic and magnetic formats, discover our interpretation of this extraordinary projection.
10. Winkel Tripel
The Winkel Tripel projection was developed by German cartographer Oswald Winkel in 1921. Its name comes from the German word for “triple”, referring to Winkel’s aim of reducing three kinds of distortion: area, direction and distance.
It is a compromise projection, created by combining the coordinates of the Aitoff and equidistant cylindrical projections. The result is neither equal-area nor conformal, but it achieves a particularly effective balance of the different properties.
The equator and central meridian are straight, while the other meridians and parallels curve gently towards the edges of the map. This gives the projection a pleasing, globe-like appearance while keeping distortion relatively moderate across much of the world.
The Winkel Tripel has become one of the most respected projections for general world maps and has been used by the National Geographic Society since 1998. It is a fine example of how a carefully considered compromise can produce a map that is both useful and beautiful.
Image - Daniel R Strebe
Our Winkel Tripel World Map brings this elegant projection to life in a colourful, contemporary scheme. Available in paper, plastic and magnetic formats, it combines detailed reference geography with a distinctive modern appearance.
View the Winkel Tripel World Map and find the finish that suits your space.
A world of possibilities
Every projection tells a slightly different story about our planet. Some preserve the size of countries, others prioritise shape or navigation, and others offer a completely new way of arranging the world.
At The Future Mapping Company, we have always enjoyed exploring these differences. They are part of what makes cartography so endlessly fascinating, and why we believe a world map can be both a useful reference and a beautiful piece of art.
There may be no perfect flat map of the Earth, but there are many wonderful ways to see it.