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Life & fun · June 3, 2014

TM

the Mercator projection like you've never seen it before

An interactive playground to explore the extreme distortions of the Mercator projection. Set any point on Earth as the new North Pole. Warp the map in real-time. See the world in a whole new way.

the Mercator projection like you've never seen it before launched on June 3, 2014 with 20 votes and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 12 years on.

Visit mrgris.com ↗Alternatives

In plain words

This interactive tool lets users explore how the Mercator projection distorts maps by choosing any point on Earth as the new North Pole and watching the map warp in real-time. Unlike standard Mercator projections, it cuts much closer to the poles, revealing extreme distortion at high latitudes. Users can see how geographical features become increasingly skewed as they approach the poles, presented sideways to accommodate the tall, narrow resulting map. It's designed for anyone curious about cartography and how map projections reshape our understanding of Earth's geography.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

But unlike a standard Mercator projection, you can substitute any point on earth as the "pole". (The initial view shows Boston as the pole point) Furthermore, this map cuts off much, much closer to the poles than normal, allowing you to see many more orders of magnitude of distortion. Because this yields a map several times taller than it is wide, it is shown sideways from its usual orientation. The Mercator projection is infamous for its distortion at high latitudes. This distortion gets exponentially worse as you approach the poles. It is in fact impossible to show the poles on a Mercator map — they are infinitely far away. Any Mercator map you've ever seen must cut off the…from mrgris.com

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