Sketching the World: An Icebreaker to Working With Data

Map the world from memory and learn data visualisation fundamentals in five simple steps

I am a map collector: I collect world maps drawn from memory. As a designer tasked with presenting our world through the design of information and data visualisation, I have become fascinated by the manner in which we encode and decode world geography in its simplest form: the hand-drawn map.

Over the last decade, I have collected hundreds of hand-drawn maps — while travelling to new countries, visiting conferences, and running workshops.

Maps guide us daily. On our phones, in our cars, embedded in the articles we read. But when did you last endeavor to sketch a map of the world from memory? If you do, you’ll most likely observe some of the following:

• The place you live in (or where you are from) will be the starting point of your drawing and at the center of your map.
• Immediate and surrounding geographies will appear disproportionately larger (and more detailed) than the rest of the world.
• And, relatedly, the impulse to check the internet for a visual reference will be very strong.