Lars Erik, one of the founders of 'I [Effing] Love Maps,' was kind enough to answer Bored Panda's questions about the project. We had a chat about the passion for cartography, how the information presented in each one is verified, and where the line between a good map and a great one lies.

"Maps are powerful in many ways. It is an effective way to communicate a phenomenon that has geographical or spatial relevance. From demonstrating the obvious of how neighboring countries see each other, to conveying complex information about the state of nature using remote sensing data," Lars told us.

"In an ever-complex world, with apparently ever-complex challenges, from climate, nature, geopolitics, war, energy security, and human rights issues—maps enable us to understand and navigate the ever-evolving complexity of our societies," he explained just how powerful maps really are.

Bored Panda was interested to hear about how the information on the maps is verified and how the reliability of the sources is checked. Lars noted that it's essential to separate the maps that they sell through their company, Mapographics, and the maps they repost on 'I [Effing] Love Maps.'

"For the maps we sell, all the data is acquired from peer-reviewed academic studies or satellite data from trusted sources such as NASA or ESA," Lars explained.

"For the maps we repost, we do a general review of the source of the data, but we do not either endorse or fully check all the background data. For instance, if we republish a map of the most common beer sold in various countries, we are not in the position that we can verify whether the sales volumes of the beer are really what the map says," he noted.

"Furthermore, for some posts, we receive a lot of feedback when they denote a politically controversial subject, such as the sovereignty of west Sahara or the acknowledgment of Palestine. We take no official position when posting these maps, but we do select maps we believe are of interest to our followers."

According to Lars, finding the line between a good and a great map is tricky. A lot depends on the audience in question.

"For our followers on IFLM, I think the maps are very effective in communicating a message, and where that message either confirms a former belief or surprises you are the ones that get the most attention. For our customers purchasing maps from Mapographics.shop, it's the design and ability to look nice on a well. And for the maps, we make aimed at more professional customers, such as international organizations, it is the ability to convey a policy-relevant message based on credible data sources and analysis," he shared that different people value slightly different things.

"And if we make maps for map nerds—it's all about the details. So there is not a single recipe, we need to consider our target group and try to make or publish maps following their viewpoint and interest."

The ‘I [Effing] Love Maps’ project has carved out a sizable niche for itself on the internet. On Facebook alone, it has 800k followers, followed by 364k fans on Instagram, as well as a further 36.8k Twitter followers. In other words, there’s well over a million internet users who love the project for its educational and informative content alike.

The team running the show notes that they keep their audience “updated about global events via maps.” And that’s exactly what they continue to do.

Whether you’re an academic or simply want to know more about the world, the maps they share are great for expanding your knowledge. They’re also fantastic primers for getting you interested on specific topics, whether economics, geography, or demographics.

For our previous feature about the project, my colleague got in touch with the founders, Pablo Izquierdo and Lars Erik. The twosome, who live in Oslo and Madrid, have been developing maps together for more than a decade, and have founded the company, Mapographics.

According to the founders, the goal of Mapographics is to make informative, educational, and aesthetic maps. “We have developed a lot of maps and analysis in the sustainability domain, and lately we have also started to sell maps for decoration. We love to merge scientific data with design,” they told Bored Panda.

The ‘I [Effing] Love Maps’ project was created over a decade ago. Pablo and Lars wanted to have a place on social media where they could share their love for maps. And it all started on good ol’ Facebook.

“It started with a Facebook page, and then moved on to Twitter and Instagram. We’re super happy to have several hundreds of thousands of followers, which to us is only a testimonial that many people share our love of maps,” Pablo told Bored Panda during an interview earlier.

According to him, people nowadays live in an ever more globalized society, meaning that the distances between us are getting smaller and smaller. It’s all thanks to cultural exchange and technology.

“In addition, themes such as those that relate to environment, climate, sustainability, man-build-environment, and more, nurture more interest in the spatial dimensions of things. Maps can represent how things are tied together in the spatial dimension, or geographical sense,” Pablo said.

“We experience a much higher interest in maps, more advanced spatial analysis, and more lightly, storytelling.”

“From a social media point of view, people love maps that are spot-on in conveying a message of stereotypical characteristics and differences between countries. From a more professional point of view, the interest in sustainability related topics in maps has skyrocketed in recent years, such as maps showing degradation of nature or the effects of climate change. But more generally speaking, what we see is that maps, as a way to represent data or tell a story, are increasingly used in media, by the government, NGOs and even in the business community.”

However, it’s far from easy to create a map that looks good, tells a story, and is also based on advanced data. There’s a lot of trial and error involved here!

“To put it simply, the process starts from the idea on what story/data the maps should express, to identification of data source, quality assurance, data processing, GIS [Geographical Information Systems] processing, and working to ensure the final print has crisp and flawless details when it turns into a final product."

A while back, Bored Panda spoke to land surveyor Patrick McGranaghan, the founder of another major community for map lovers. He explained to us that there are a variety of different reasons why someone chooses to make a map in the first place.

“Sometimes for navigation, sometimes for showing statistical phenomena, and sometimes for fantasy. While artistic skill helps, it is not absolutely necessary. The important thing is to make it easy for users to glean useful information. Most maps should have a thesis or a story it is going to tell and this needs to be told through the map," he told us.

The land surveyor noted that many beautiful maps these days are made using Blender. “Blender has a great ability to show light and shadow patterns that are almost photo-realistic. I think there are ways to use this program beyond showing maps with realistic terrain,” he explained that the computer program can help mapmakers achieve the effects that they desire, e.g. showing realistic terrain and more.