30+ Maps That’ll Change Your Perspective on the World

At school, we’re taught about all kinds of traditional maps, whether it’s a world map, maps of specific continents, or a map to help us learn the 50 states. We’re used to seeing maps in their more conventional sense. To switch things up a bit, here’s a compilation of unique and interesting maps that will change your whole perspective on the world.

Is it just us who thought Japan was a lot smaller than this? When it’s put up against the US, it really shows how massive this country actually is. We mean, it makes sense, with how much of Japan is pure mountains and rainforests. With the population sitting at around 122 million, it adds up. As it turns out, Japan is just under 378,000 square kilometers, but 92% of the Japanese population lives in the urban areas of the country. We wonder what other countries are bigger or smaller than we think.

Let’s face it — we’re all a sucker for some big-name brands, right? Well, this map has figured out which brands are most famous in each US state. Some of these make perfect sense, like Apple for California, as that’s where the headquarters are. The creator of this map, Steve Lovelace, says he chose the brands depending on whether they simply had ties to the state or were incredibly popular amongst the state’s population. Dr Pepper in Texas threw us off, but it turns out it was invented there. Who knew?

How cool is this? Each colored section of this map indicates where 10% of the population lives. It’s interesting to see which areas have a really dispersed and spread-out population, whereas some areas are really packed and dense. To put it into perspective, the thinner slices in Asia hold the same amount of the world’s population as the eternity of the green slice in the Americas. However, a lot of that is the Pacific Ocean, where, of course, there are fewer places to reside.

This map shows where the majority of redheads live throughout Europe. To no surprise, the most populated redhead areas are in Ireland and Scotland. Currently, anywhere between 10% and 30% of the world’s redheads live in Ireland, and outside Europe, there are only 0.06%. Interestingly, there are a few in Western Russia, and the rest slowly disperses from Western Europe all the way East. Hey, redheads — at least you now know where you can find more people like you in Europe.