Quotes and talking points

Short quotes for captions / headlines

"Looking at the world as it really is."

"Every projection is an opinion. Choose it consciously."

"I wanted to see the planet printed on a sheet of paper at real sizes."

"School maps have shaped our mental image of the world for generations. It's time to revise them."

"Africa is 14 times larger than Greenland. Mercator doesn't show that. This map does."

Medium quotes (for cutlines and longer texts)

"I started from the problems I noticed as a user, not from previous teams of cartographers. I wanted to get there from a personal and pragmatic standpoint, not a mathematical one. The work has been manual and laborious — someone will surely refine it computationally."

"It is not the definitive map. It is one proposal. The goal is not to replace every projection — it is to offer a concrete alternative to Mercator in classrooms."

"AuthaGraph divides the sphere into triangles. Dymaxion into icosahedra. I divide it into real geographic regions — India, Arabia, Madagascar... — because they are the units the human brain already recognises as things."

Talking points (for interviews)

On the problem

• Mercator was designed in 1569 for maritime navigation. It was never intended to show the world "as it is".
• Even so, it is the map that dominates schools, textbooks and services like Google Maps.
• The consequences are real: most people leave school believing Greenland is larger than Africa. It isn't — it's 14 times smaller.
• Antarctica appears as a strip at the bottom of the map or disappears entirely. But it is just another continent.

On the solution

• Instead of applying a single transformation to the entire sphere, we divide the world into 23 geographic pieces.
• Each piece is projected from its own centre, preserving its internal proportions.
• Pieces chain around real boundaries: Arabia rotates around Sinai, Eurasia around the Strait of Hormuz.
• The result is a conventional rectangular map where each continent has its real shape and size.

On the process

• We did not start from other alternative projections (AuthaGraph, Dymaxion). The solution was reached from scratch, deliberately seeking a new approach.
• Once the result was reached, it was indeed compared with precedents to position the proposal.
• The work has been manual and laborious: hundreds of iterations, case-by-case adjustments, seams painted by hand to disguise discontinuities.

On the goal

• The goal is not technical, it is pedagogical: for this map to enter classrooms as an alternative to Mercator.
• The maps are freely available (CC BY-SA 4.0) for schools, textbooks, the press.
• Collaboration is welcome with educational publishers, schools and cultural institutions.

On why the code is not open source

• The maps are free to use. That is the important part.
• The code is shared on demand for serious projects.
• The proposal is a personal and aesthetic contribution, not a technical tool open to infinite versions.
• The intent is to preserve the coherence of the original proposal.

Anti-quotables (what not to say)

• ❌ "My map is the correct / definitive / error-free one." → Mosaic-23 has acknowledged limitations.
• ❌ "Mercator is bad / false / unfair." → Mercator has its use; the problem is having chosen it for educational contexts.
• ❌ "I'm a professional cartographer." → The author is an independent personal initiative. This is a strength of the narrative, not a weakness.
• ❌ "I have revolutionised cartography." → It is one contribution among many. The revolution would come if it enters classrooms.