We recently completed the poster for the 27th International Festival of Women Composers. Over the last two decades we have designed most of these posters, and they are accessible online at the Margaret Zach International Women Composers Library.

The poster above emerged out of the desire to celebrate the countries-of-origin for the performers (Australia, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and the United States. Since I am also interested in geography, using a map of the world made sense, but which one? The Mercator projection, probably the most widely used map of the world, is notoriously inaccurate toward the north pole (Greenland appears much larger than it is in reality). One of the better projections comes from Buckminster Fuller (the Dymaxion map, based on a subdivision of the globe using triangles), and there are other recent map projections that are even more accurate, such as the Autograph World Map. However, the Dymaxion mpa was available as a simple line drawing which allowed me to fill the performers’ countries in Photoshop with color (see images below).