Which World Map Is Right for You?
Choosing a world map sounds straightforward. Until you realise there isn't really one definitive way of showing the world.
Cartographers have been arguing about how best to do it for centuries. We're not going to ask you to join in.
Turning a globe into a flat map always involves compromise. Some projections prioritise the relative size of countries, others preserve local shapes and angles, while some deliberately find a balance between the two.
But you don't need to understand map projections to choose a world map for your home or office.
A much easier place to start is with a simple question:
What do you want from your map?
I want a world map to explore
Winkel Tripel World Map
For many people, part of the pleasure of having a world map on the wall is being able to use it. It's a reference point for the home or office — somewhere to find a place you've heard about, trace a journey, settle an argument or simply stop and explore for a few minutes.
If that's what you're looking for, a compromise projection is probably the best place to start.
Compromise projections do exactly what their name suggests. Rather than preserving either area or shape perfectly, they find a balance between different kinds of distortion.
Two of our world maps fall into this category: the Classic World Wall Map, using the Robinson projection, and our Winkel Tripel World Wall Map.
Both have gently curved meridians, helping to give the world a more natural, spherical appearance despite being shown on a flat surface.
The Robinson projection was developed with appearance very much in mind. Rather than simply applying a mathematical formula and accepting whatever came out, Arthur Robinson worked towards what he considered a visually satisfactory balance of distortion across the world.
Our Classic World Map is probably our most traditional all-rounder. It combines countries, borders, cities and capitals with a surprising amount of physical information. Look more closely and you'll find tectonic plate boundaries, arrows showing their direction of movement, and detailed ocean-floor relief showing the ridges, fracture zones and basins that shape the seafloor.
Our Winkel Tripel World Map is a little cleaner and more graphic. It was developed by German cartographer Oswald Winkel in 1921, with Tripel — German for “triple” — referring to its attempt to minimise three different kinds of distortion: area, direction and distance. There's less emphasis on physical information than on our Classic Map, while fluorescent inks give it a brighter, more contemporary edge.
Both use contrasting colours across neighbouring countries, making borders and individual countries easy to identify — useful if you want a map to explore as well as something that looks good on the wall.
Choose one of these if: you want a beautiful, useful and immediately recognisable view of the world.
I want a world map as a piece of graphic art
Future Map
If the map's role is less about being a reference point and more about making a visual statement, our Future Map takes a very different approach.
It uses a cylindrical equal-area projection. Its priority is to show countries and continents at their correct relative surface areas.
The price you pay is shape.
Countries become increasingly distorted towards the poles, which means that if you've spent your life looking at more conventional world maps, your first reaction may well be:
That can't be right.
And that's partly the point.
The familiar Mercator projection preserves local shapes and angles but dramatically exaggerates area towards the poles. Greenland can appear roughly comparable in size to Africa, despite Africa actually being around 14 times larger.
On an equal-area map, that relationship is corrected. Africa becomes the enormous continent it really is. Brazil suddenly looks huge. Greenland becomes considerably smaller and Russia loses some of the visual dominance we're accustomed to seeing on traditional world maps.
Equal-area mapping became part of a much wider public debate in the 1970s when Arno Peters promoted what he presented as a new and fairer alternative to Mercator. There was just one problem: James Gall had described essentially the same projection more than a century earlier. Peters' rather definitive claims ruffled a few cartographic feathers, and the projection is now generally known as the Gall–Peters projection.
Whatever the controversy, Peters was remarkably successful at getting people to question the world map they had grown up with.
We don't regard equal-area mapping as a perfect answer to Mercator. You regain accuracy in size, but lose shape. It's one of the reasons compromise projections offer such an attractive middle ground.
But that's also what makes the Future Map interesting. It's not simply a reference map; it's an alternative way of looking at something you thought you already knew.
We've taken a similarly different approach to the colouring. Instead of giving every neighbouring country a contrasting colour, colours grade across countries and continents. Political boundaries remain, but they don't dominate the image, creating a more harmonious view of the world.
Available at around a metre wide or as our Huge Future Map, at nearly two metres across, it can become a properly imposing piece of graphic wall art.
Choose the Future Map if: you want something striking, thought-provoking and likely to start conversations.
I want something genuinely unusual
If you're choosing a world map primarily as wall art, this is where things get a little more interesting.
These are maps for someone who's seen plenty of conventional world maps and wants something they probably haven't seen before.
Peirce Quincuncial
We developed our Peirce Quincuncial World Map to celebrate The Future Mapping Company's 20th birthday.
It's a projection we'd admired for years because it presents the world in such an unexpected way.
For a start, it's square.
Its unusual Arctic-centred arrangement also changes the geographical relationships we're accustomed to seeing. North America, Greenland, Europe and Russia suddenly relate to one another in a very different way.
That perspective feels particularly interesting today as the Arctic becomes increasingly important geopolitically. Greenland, northern shipping routes and the relationship between Russia, North America and Europe make much more intuitive sense when you look down on the Arctic rather than always viewing the world from the side.
There's another rather wonderful peculiarity: the projection tessellates. Put copies of the square map alongside one another and the geography continues across the edges, allowing the pattern to repeat across a wall.
Image - Strebe
So if one Peirce Quincuncial isn't enough, you could tile an entire wall with them. Far be it from us to discourage you.
Choose the Peirce Quincuncial if: you want a world map that's immediately different and gives you a completely new perspective on a familiar planet.
Sinu-Mollweide
Our Philbrick Sinu-Mollweide World Map approaches the world differently again.
Developed by Allen K. Philbrick in the 1950s, it's an unusual equal-area projection combining elements of the Sinusoidal and Mollweide projections.
We've given ours a dramatic black background against bright colour, producing a world map with a strong graphic quality. Its unusual form and shapes make it feel almost as much like abstract wall art as a conventional reference map.
It's certainly not the quiet option.
Choose the Sinu-Mollweide if: conventional world maps leave you a little cold and you want something graphic, unusual and unapologetically different.
I'm fascinated by the planet itself
Perhaps countries, capitals and political boundaries aren't really what interest you at all.
Our Geological World Map looks beneath them to reveal the extraordinary geological history of the planet itself.
It's 4.6 billion years of geological history distilled into one extraordinary map, where science and design come together.
Geological formations create a remarkable patchwork of shapes and colours across both land and ocean floor, revealing the different rock periods that have developed throughout the Earth's history.
Even the key is different: you're reading time in millions of years.
We use the Winkel Tripel projection for the Geological World Map, so the underlying world remains relatively familiar. But the information laid across it transforms the map into something surprisingly abstract.
It's also a particularly good example of something we've always loved about map making: the beauty that can emerge from the data itself.
You don't need to understand geology to appreciate the shapes, patterns and colours. At around a metre wide — or just under two metres as our Huge Geological World Map — it becomes as much a piece of graphic wall art as a scientific map.
Choose the Geological World Map if: you're more interested in what our planet is made of than where its political borders happen to fall.
There isn't a perfect world map. Every projection makes choices about what to preserve and what to distort — and every map has its own character.
That's partly why we've never wanted to make just one. A world map can be a reference point for a family home, a bold piece of graphic art, something unusual for a contemporary interior, or simply a fascinating way to explore the planet.
After more than 20 years of making maps for walls, we still think the most important thing is finding one you'll enjoy living with.