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Reimagining the Atlas as an Ultra-Minimalist Visualization
‘It’s the ultimate simplification of reality’
By Liz Stinson
How much information does a line convey? Depending on the context, it can be as empty as ribbon or as rich as an encyclopedia. In the case of Theo Deutinger’s new book, Ultimate Atlas, lines contain an entire world’s worth of information.
The Ultimate Atlas hardly looks like an atlas. Rendered in stark black and white, the book’s pages look more like barcodes or an abstract drawing of piano keys. In reality, the data visualizations that fill the 100-page book are minimalist representations of everything from the size of countries to the kinds of crops that are found on Earth.
Deutinger, who previously created intricate visualizations of the world’s most violent architecture, applies his same penchant for chromatic minimalism to the atlas. Instead of embracing the inherent complexity of Earth, he boils the planet down to black-and-white lines that cut vertically across the page like a notebook flipped 180 degrees. “I wanted to strip it all down,” he says. “That’s what Earth is without our intellect, without our urge for counting and knowing — it’s just a white page.”
