I was just watching a program on HGTV where the designer was oh-so-proud of putting a map on the wall of an office they had provided for someone who was known to like maps. And in my mind I was hearing a John Cleese voice going, “Madam, what is this? Mercator projection? Are you completely deranged?!”

But I’m weird.

I like maps. Always have. I know (as most map geeks know) that Mercator has more and more distortion the farther away you get from the equator. I stood up and applauded when I saw the West Wing episode about maps. I’m the kind of guy who might say, “I was using Dymaxion before it was cool.”

In that spirit, I want to show you something:

Those pale blue discs are called Tissot’s Indicatrix (sometimes Indicatrices when people aren’t fussy about their plurals). They start as circles. If they get bigger, you’re seeing distortion of size; if they look stretched, distortion of area. If they look like equal sized dots, there’s no distortion at all; the more they get away from that, the more distortion you’re seeing.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the great advantage of the Danseiji IV projection, by Justin Haruaki Kunimune.

Here it is again, in a more traditional political map:

Yes, the oceans are a bit odd, but in a white-on-white color scheme, you can just trim the map to a rectangular frame, and it’ll look just fine. In the classic Greenland vs Africa comparison, note how Greenland is much smaller. Since Greenland is 830,000 sq mi and Africa is 11,730,000, you’d expect that.

Like I said… I’m weird.

(And before I go, here’s a physical version, just because I think it’s purty:)

(And for a fascinating approach, check out this page using the photographs of a room, chopped up in the views of many map projections, although the Danseiji IV is the very last one.)