The Robinson projection
Robinson doesn't try to win at any one thing. It just tries to look like a map should look — not too stretched anywhere, not too squashed anywhere. That's why it hung on classroom walls for decades.
Key facts
- Family
- Pseudocylindrical, compromise
- Designer
- Arthur H. Robinson
- Year
- 1963
- Preserves
- —
- Best for
- General-purpose classroom and reference world maps, wall posters, atlases
- Weak at
- Precise measurement — area, shape, and distance are all slightly off, everywhere
What it looks like
Robinson looks like a gently rounded rectangle, with curved lines of longitude and a smooth oval-ish outline. It doesn't have Mercator's harsh stretching near the poles or Gall-Peters' skinny equator — everything looks reasonably proportioned.
What it keeps, and what it gives up
Nothing is perfectly true on a Robinson map — not size, not shape, not distance. But nothing is wildly wrong either. It spreads a small amount of distortion everywhere instead of fixing one thing and breaking another.
Why it looks 'right' anyway
Robinson was tuned by an actual person looking at it and adjusting it until it felt balanced, not by a strict size-only or shape-only rule. That's part of why it feels so familiar — it was built to match what people expect a world map to look like.
A short history
Arthur Robinson designed this map in 1963. National Geographic started using it in 1988 for their big wall maps, and kept using it until 1998, when they switched to Winkel Tripel instead.
When to use it, and when not to
Reach for Robinson when a map just needs to look like a sensible picture of the world — a poster, a classroom wall, a book cover. Don't reach for it if you actually need to measure how big something is or navigate by compass.
Try it yourself
Frequently asked questions
Was the Robinson projection ever the official National Geographic map?
Yes — National Geographic used Robinson as its standard world map from 1988 to 1998, when its wall maps and atlases needed a general-purpose projection that looked balanced without claiming to be exact about anything. They switched to Winkel Tripel in 1998.
Is the Robinson projection equal-area or conformal?
Neither. Robinson is a compromise projection, deliberately not fully preserving area, shape, or distance. Instead it was tuned to keep every kind of distortion moderate across the whole map, which is a different design goal than making any single property exact.
Why does the Robinson projection look 'right' even though it isn't exact?
Arthur Robinson built it by adjusting the map's coordinates by eye until it looked visually balanced, rather than deriving it from a single mathematical rule like equal-area or conformal. That approach, plus decades of being reproduced in atlases and classrooms, means it closely matches most people's mental picture of 'a world map,' even though a ruler would find it slightly wrong everywhere.
What replaced the Robinson projection at National Geographic?
Winkel Tripel. National Geographic switched to it in 1998, judging its balance of area, shape, and distance distortion, especially its gentler treatment of the poles, an improvement over Robinson for a general-purpose reference map.
What is a compromise projection?
A compromise projection doesn't preserve area, shape, or distance exactly anywhere. Instead, it's tuned to keep all three kinds of distortion small and balanced across the whole map, so nothing looks wildly wrong, even though nothing is precisely right either. Robinson and Winkel Tripel are the two best-known examples.