Image: National Geographic

The above image is a selection and compression of an enormous interactive map of the almost two hundred manned and unmanned exploratory missions in our solar system over the past fifty years. It was created by graphic designers Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic. Click on the link and use the box in the upper-right corner of the screen to choose what area you’d like to see, and zoom as needed.

Link via OhGimzo!

Andy Woodruff noticed that Ohio has 88 counties, the same number as keys on a piano. So he went to work on a map application that assigns a note to each county. You can play a song on the map (a couple of songs are plotted out for you) or reassign the notes based on census data such as population, number of rental houses, or median age. You can even hear what a route from one place to another sounds like! Link to map. Link to the story behind it. -via the Presurfer

Stephen Von Worley created a map of the USA showing where McDonalds outlets are. As you can see, they are (almost) everywhere! You’ll have to go to South Dakota to get 100 miles away from a McDonalds. Link -via Buzzfeed

Ever wondered just how much surface area you would need to supply the entire world with all of its power needs using only energy collected from solar panels?  Luckily for us the Land Art Generator Initiative have done all the math.  Crunching the numbers based on our current and projected energy usage and using statistics grounded on the solar technology that is available to us today, they have created this handy map of what 2030 could look like.  The map shows use distributed roughly proportional to use and weather patterns.

A related link in the article shows an alternative map based on offshore wind power.

Link – via coolinfographics

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by renderanything.

In his art blog called Atlas, Spanish artist Fernando Vicente takes the distinct forms of landmasses and convert them into fantastic images. I particularly like the map of Africa turned into a skull (with Europe being the exploding head – lots of political imagery there).

Check out the entire series here: Link | Fernando’s other work: Anatomías (and for those of you who like politics, check out his work for Diario El País)

The map above, Universalis Cosmographia, drawn in 1507 by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (and hence also called the Waldseemüller Map) made news recently when conservators at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. put it in a state of the art encasement. Sure it’s old, but why go through all the trouble? Turns out, the Waldseemüller has an intriguing link to America:

A map thought lost for almost five centuries is found and is now on display. It’s often called America’s birth certificate.

Created in 1507, the Waldseemüller map is the first map to show a Pacific Ocean, the Western Hemisphere and a continent called America.

Science Daily has the story: Link (with video clip)

Literary Organism, a visualization of Part One of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Artist Stefanie Posavec took pieces from On the Road by Jack Kerouac and turned them into various maps, dissecting the literary masterpiece and converting it into a visual one:

Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space.

The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject. The literary organism, rhythm textures and sentence drawings are truly gorgeous pieces.

Link

This animation just confirms what I already knew: Wal-Mart is sweeping the nation like an unstoppable virus. It’s pretty amazing to see how the company has exploded across the States since 1965. Click on the link to see it go from one dot (one store), to a few dots, to several dots, to a handful to dots, to complete domination.

Link via DarkRoastedBlend

Link via Mighty Goods