Most problems on Earth are due to greed, hate, and rejection. Many people draw lines between themselves and “others” to build their own communities apart from everybody else. Those distinctions are based on different reasons: religion, social background, skin color, habits or nationality.
This differentiation is supported by maps. In mapping, lines are (often) used as borders to divide the space into sections: borders between land and water, borders between different altitudes or borders between nations.
One World Map
As a person who loves to make maps, I was thinking about how a map might look like that support the convention of CONNECTIONS rather than DIVISIONS. So I created the One World Map, a map consisting of only one single line.
Starting at the frame in the bottom right corner of the map a continuous line was drawn, connecting Melbourne (Australia) with Oslo (Norway), Seoul (South Korea) with Abuja (Nigeria), La Paz (Bolivia) with Paris (France) or New York (USA) with Baghdad (Iraq). When observing the map from distance it seems to be a normal political map displaying borders of nations. But when looking closely the map reveals that the borders are actually connections between all countries. I see this as a kind of metaphor:
To realize that we are somehow all one world community we need to look close to each other.
While editing the map for several weeks I tried to include as much detail to the map as possible. All elements of the map are part of the line. This includes country borders and icons. Islands, for instance, are connected with the mainland through a line going to and creating the island and then going back again to the mainland.
I also designed my own font to fulfill the “one-line” criteria:
For those who want to discover the map in more detail, I included an interactive version of it with zoom and pan functionality. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the button in the top left corner to change to full screen. If you are brave enough you can follow the line starting at the frame in the bottom right corner.
As a conclusion of this post and as a message I want to deliver with the One World Map I want to state the following:
By keeping drawing borders there will be no solution to all the problems we have these days. Let’s try to draw connections!
Get your copy
If you like my map and would like to have a copy hanged on your wall or as a digital high-res version feel free to contact me to discuss the possibilities (e.g. I can change colors of the map).
What do you think about the One World Map? Do you like the concept? Do you want to know more about how I created it? Then leave a comment and I will come back to you asap!