AuthaGraph: A More Authentic World Map View Wins Design Award

Authagraph world map
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Better than Mercator could do? And at a time when these problems are finally important?

The Mercator map is known to have major flaws, such as its distortion of the sizes of Antarctica and Greenland.

Tokyo-based architect and artist Hajime Narukawa wanted to fix the problem of distorted relative land mass sizes.

Narukawa has said that these longstanding problems may not have been very important in the past, when these regions were less traveled.

But now glaciers are melting and technology is making access to cold regions easier.

Hajime Narukawa
Hajime Narukawa

The Good Design award organization describes the map in the following terms:

“This original mapping method can transfer a spherical surface to a rectangular surface such as a map of the world while maintaining correctly proportions in areas*. AuthaGraph faithfully represents all oceans, continents including the neglected Antarctica. These fit within a rectangular frame with no interruptions. The map can be tessellated without visible seams. Thus the AuthaGraphic world map provides an advanced precise perspective of our planet. *The map need a further step to increase a number of subdivision for improving its accuracy to be officially called an area-equal map.”

Concept Watch

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This is the ASIG nohero/nosky Concentric D. wrist watch, a concept for CD2 that was designed by Row Zero aka Simon Williamson, an associate professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, which redesigns not just the surface but also the case of the watch.

Instead of a motor of gears rotating the arms of the watch from its center, the ASIG Concentric D. powers itself from the border of the watch face, leaving the face empty and transparent.

The arms radiate inward rather than outward, and must run along three tracks on the inside of the watch face border.

The ASIG Concentric D. concept also maintains the traditional feature of the watch winder, whether the winder is used to tension springs within the border of the face or is just for show is not known.

The watch hands are decorated with rows of tiny lights for night wear.

The ASIG Concentric D. has garnered a significant amount of attention based on its design alone. The unique concept watch is not in production, and Future Now does not know of any similar watches using the layout conceived by Williamson.

By Andy Stern

Behance
Row Zero

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