Displaying dimensions

The British Telegraph produced a series of world maps depicting various comparisons between the world's countries (e.g., wealth, housing costs, war deaths). While these maps are well done along the lines of previous United Nations comparison maps, they raise questions for me about the balance between attractiveness and clarity: when should artistic issues take a back seat to clarity concerns?


This map depicts the number of international immigrants living in each country as a percentage of their population. One can easily see the size differences between, say, the United States and Spain. However,given the warping effect used by the creators of this map, one wonders if Spain is bigger than it looks on the map but it just got folded under when the map was warped. The same goes for places that have been stretched such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Second, it is not clear what the different colors represent, if anything. It appears that they have been used to demarcate different regions of the world but they ambiguiously imply relations beyond that -- why are North America and Europe similarly dark colored? Why is most of Asia light colored? Why are South America and Africa similarly green-blue? And what is the meaning of the shadings of each color?


The casual viewer of the map may not be put off by these color issues, but the use of color shading without having a particular reason or without trying to show a particular dimension is confusing and creates ambiguity. The map above, depicting HIV rates around the world, raises similar questions. Ultimately, one should be careful when making artistic choices to make sure they don't muddy the information message.