(Image Credit: Amusing Planet)
In order to identify unauthorized publication, mapmakers include small but intentional flaws in their maps. These flaws could be a fake street or a town that does not really exist, and no one can perceive it except for the creator. This kind of practice has been around for centuries. But sometimes, cartographers just do it for fun.
A recently published story at Eye on Design brings to light an unspoken tradition among Swiss cartographers to hide small doodles inside Switzerland’s official maps. There is a barely perceptible spider here, a fish there, a reclining naked woman disguised as a stream, and a marmot blended with the hills. These illicit drawings are cleverly hidden among the contour lines that depict Switzerland’s remote mountainous regions. Being located far from populated areas, they often escape scrutiny for decades.
Unfortunately, when the doodles are discovered, they are immediately removed when the maps are updated, as, according to the national mapping agency of Switzerland, the Swisstopo, “creativity has no place on these maps.”
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