This vintage-style map of the USA puts the titles of songs that mention place names onto their corresponding geographical spot. So, for example, the Beasties Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is placed right on top of Brooklyn.
Some of our favourite song choices are the ones which require you to think a little harder about connections, such as Space Oddity (David Bowie) which signposts Cape Canaveral, After the Gold Rush (Neil Young) which references Sutter’s Mill, and Homecoming (Kanye West) which is placed near the rapper’s home town of Chicago.
You can get the map for £30 (~$39) at UK-based studio Dorothy. They also have a world song map (also £30/~$39) and a special edition world song map (£35/~$45). Head to Spotify to see the accompanying playlist.
(The Awesomer) Read the rest
Antipodr is a nifty little site that lets visitors learn what's on the opposite side of the globe from any coordinate. For instance, Auckland, New Zealand is directly opposite Venta de Leche in southern Spain. Read the rest
The Washington Post created some interesting maps that show levels of diversification in various American cities. They categorize cities like Chicago as examples of legacy segregation, where cities like Houston indicate rapid diversification. Read the rest
Topi Tjukanov makes remarkable mapped data visualization, like this map of optimal routes by car from the geographic center of the contiguous United States to all counties. Read the rest
Anders Kvernberg, aka PisseGuri82, created this lovely map of ten of the world's shortest borders. Here's the full-size version. Read the rest
Josh Jones mapped out every leap from every episode of the classic sci-fi show Quantum Leap. Jump with Dr. Sam Beckett and his hologram pal Al all over the world again as he tries to find his way back to his own home, his own time, and his own body. Read the rest
Walks in Rome is an interactive map project that updates and modernizies a famous 1870 guidebook of Rome by August Hare. Read the rest
Location platform Here Technologies calculated how far one hour of driving can take drivers out of major American cities starting on Friday at 4, 7, and 10 pm. Read the rest
Spanish designer Alberto Lucas López created this gorgeous infographic that shows the proportion of native speakers of each major language. Read the rest
Sasha Trubetskoy always makes great maps, like this cool imagining of the Roman Empire road system in the style of a public transit system. Read the rest
Everything about this 1960s combination map and fan is fantastic: the Asia-centric map, the gold foil edges, the delicate wooden handle, and the beautiful illustrations. Lovely and doubly practical! Read the rest
In the late 19th century, travel times became a thing of fascination as modes of transportation improved by leaps and bounds (e.g., Around the World in 80 Days, published in 1873). Great thinkers of the day like Francis Galton even devised isochrone maps, which showed how long it would take to get from a central point to other points of interest. Read the rest
The Klencke Atlas is a massive 350-year old bound book that has graced the entrance of the British Library maps room. Now it's being digitized with the latest technology, and the process is remarkable. Read the rest
This nifty interactive map shows education levels of everyone over 25, with red representing less than high school continuing up the spectrum to blue meaning graduate degree. Read the rest
What happens when a professional cartographer needs a break? For Sasha Trubetskoy, it meant making a map of the Bay Area based on Urban Dictionary entries. Berzerkely, Freakmont, Pathetica, and The Yoch are just a few points of interest. Read the rest
James Plakovic composes lots of scores that take the form of a composer, an object, or in this case, a map of the world. Set in 2/4 time signature with 32 bars, the piece does a pretty accurate job of depicting a standard Mercator projection that starts and ends with Asia. Read the rest
The American Museum of Natural History's hockey stick graph of explosive human population growth in the last 200 years is projected to increase in the short term, tapering off around 11 billion, give or take several billion depending on a few variables. Read the rest
