A Slovakian student and amateur graphic designer has created an in-depth map of the internet, envisioning the positions that some of the biggest websites would adopt were they physical places.
Complete with several continents, smaller landmasses and archipelagos, along with an Ocean of Information and the App Sea, the illustration places each website according to the role it plays on the internet and where it stands in its relation to others.
For example, the biggest continent in the west is Google, which is then split into a number of provinces, including YouTube and Google Search.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, designer Martin Vargic explained:
“The map is divided into two main parts; software companies, gaming companies and some of the real-world oriented websites are located on the right part of the map, or ‘the old world.”
Vargic said he was inspired to produce the cartographic wonder after he saw another Map of the Internet published by webcomic xkcd back in 2010.
The student began creating his own in December last year and drew visual inspiration from maps previously published by National geographic, as well as using Alexa data to analyse lists of the world’s most visited websites.
The map was hand drawn in Photoshop, and reportedly took three weeks of 10-hour days to complete.
The project also includes a smaller, real-world map showing countries coloured by internet browser usage – with North America appearing as a stronghold of Internet Explorer and Europe and South America as the homes of Google Chrome. The most widely used browser in Africa, according to the illustration, is Mozilla Firefox.
Brands with a comprehensive website marketing strategy in place would do well to take note of just how much of an impact engaging graphics can have – particularly in terms of driving up site traffic.
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