A Little Help From My Friends: A Look Inside The “Data Visualization Society Map of Global Connectivity”
By: Jason Forrest
Tags: Cartography, Datahumanism, Data Visualization, Dataviz, Buckminster Fuller

The Data Visualization Society (DVS) kicked off its first challenge on March 10th and since I’m an active member, I thought I’d make something. Elijah Meeks made public an anonymized collection of data that was entered by the DVS community when they joined the group about a 2 weeka ago. Here’s the prompt:

I’m one of the moderators of the #historic-viz channel so I knew that I’d like to build off of something that I shared in the channel and I’ve been a fan of Buckminster Fuller for years. I suspected that others would use a traditional map projection, so my first thought was to create a Dymaxion map.

But here’s the catch: I don't know anything about making maps and I have never used a tool to map out geospatial data. My goal in writing this article is to share my process and expose my learning journey. To quote the Beetles: “I (got) by with a little help from my friends.”

The Dymaxion Map: A New Way to See the World

Noted cartographer and all-around-good-guy Kenneth Field previously wrote in the blog for the International Cartographic Association about the Dymaxion map. “First published as an article in The March 1st, 1943 edition of Life magazine, Buckminster Fuller’s compromise projection contains far less distortion than other flat maps. The map was printed as a pull-out section designed to allow readers to assemble the map. It divides the globe’s surface into a continuous surface without bisecting major land masses and it is unique in that there is no right way up. It can be read from any orientation and rearranged in a number of alternative ways.

Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map, 1980 link

Field continues: “Fuller went on to publish his ‘Airocean’ world map using the projection in 1954 that employed a modified icosahedron. The term Dymaxion was a name applied by Fuller to this and many other of his inventions. Each triangular edge matches the scale of a partial great circle on the corresponding globe and it that sense, points within each facet shrink towards its middle point (which is the inverse of many other projections).” Indeed Fuller elaborates on the scale in the map to the left. “Edges of Icosa triangles equal to 63’ 26’, 3,806 nautical miles, 8 1/2 jet aircraft hours, 14 conventional aircraft hours, 7 ship days.”

Buckminster Fuller in front of the World’s Fair dome in 1967. link

The Buckminster Fuller Institute has a wealth of information about Fuller’s life, mission and impact: “Dedicating his life to making the world work for all of humanity, Fuller operated as a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called “artifacts.” Fuller did not limit himself to one field but worked as a ‘comprehensive anticipatory design scientist’ to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty. Throughout the course of his life, Fuller held 28 patents, authored 28 books, received 47 honorary degrees. And while his most well know artifact, the geodesic dome, has been produced over 300,000 times worldwide, Fuller’s true impact on the world today can be found in his continued influence upon generations of designers, architects, scientists and artists working to create a more sustainable planet.”

Creating My First (and Only) Dymaxion Map

To reiterate: I did not have any experience creating maps, but I am very interested in learning more and my work has never given me an opportunity to plot out geospatial data with a digital tool. I’d love to say that I took this opportunity to learn new software, but the truth is, I found Robert Christie’s interactive map downloaded a .png from his kepler.gl, then adjusted the map and distorted the pieces to fit the Dymaxion projection.