The map used here was designed by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999. This award-winning AuthaGraph Map maintains accurate sizes and proportions of Earth’s land while translating a three-dimensional sphere into a two-dimensional, flat rectangle.

Eurocentric perspectives have shaped map design for centuries, creating a distorted perception of the world’s landmasses. The most common map is the Mercator Projection, created in 1569, which grossly manipulates the scale of Earth’s geography. Areas farther from the equator are stretched, resulting with Europe and Russia being disproportionately larger than South America and Africa.

Although seeing countries in unfamiliar positions can at first be disorienting, this map is the most successful in representing true size.

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