Hello fellow Cartographers,
I'm Bas, and in normal days I call myself a graphic designer, but for my graduation project (of my study "graphic design") I'm going to create a huge mapping project (if you're interested in the bottom are links to my design work). My graduation theme concerns the BRIC & PIGS countries (an economic term). BRIC standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China, the rising economies. PIGS standing for Portugal, Italy/Ireland, Greece/Great-Britain and Spain, the crumbling and economies which are on the verge of collapsing. In my research I came across so much information of these countries, which was all more interesting and partly the cause of these situations the countries were in. The differences (and diversity) in religions, the previous oppression they've been under or the former world powers they once were...

My idea was to create a map which is not based on geographical data but all this data that is so much more interesting and really tells you something about a country instead of giving you a geographical correct image of a country. So while mapping, I'm going to make references to the information that shapes a country. So in case of China a few ideas could be: communism for a soil for the country, a seriously shrinking "hutong" forest, and a huge cliff of the cultural revolution genocide. This is just the first idea I had for this project, but I was wondering if you guys had anything interesting that was already done on mapping like this? Mapping without geographical reference or other references which were used into the cartography.

cheers & any help or feedback would be very, very much appreciated.

bas
portfolio 1
portfolio 2