Laconic History of The World (2012)

My first attempt at a typographic map. Don’t be content with the shrunken version up there: this thing is pretty dang sprawling: I’ve prepped a mind-boggling 12,500 pixel wide version you can enjoy exploring:

http://hugepic.io/d2012641f/3.00/57.89/9.67

This map was produced by running all the various countries’ “History of _____” Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country’s boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words.

I’ve also prepared a reader’s companion to highlight a few of the more interesting findings. Read it here.