The Winkel Tripel projection
Winkel Tripel is another map that doesn't try to be perfect at one thing — it tries to be reasonably fair to size, shape, and distance all at once. It's the map National Geographic uses for its big wall maps today.
Key facts
- Family
- Modified azimuthal, compromise
- Designer
- Oswald Winkel
- Year
- 1921
- Preserves
- —
- Best for
- General-reference world maps and atlases — National Geographic's standard since 1998
- Weak at
- Precise measurement — area, shape, and distance are all slightly off, everywhere
What it looks like
Winkel Tripel looks similar to Robinson at a glance — a rounded world with curved lines of longitude — but it's built from a different recipe: it blends two different projections together and splits the difference.
What 'Tripel' means
Tripel means 'triple' in German, and Oswald Winkel picked that name because his map tries to minimize three different kinds of distortion at once, instead of fixing one and ignoring the rest.
What it keeps, and what it gives up
Nothing is exactly right — size is a little off, shape is a little off, distance is a little off — but nothing anywhere on the map looks absurd. That balance is the whole design.
Why National Geographic switched to it
National Geographic used Robinson for a decade, then switched to Winkel Tripel in 1998 because it does an even better job of balancing size, shape, and distance across the whole map, especially near the poles.
When to use it, and when not to
Reach for Winkel Tripel for the same reasons as Robinson — a poster, a wall map, a book, anything where the map just needs to look sensibly right. It's not the map for measuring exact size or steering a ship.
Try it yourself
Frequently asked questions
Why did National Geographic switch to Winkel Tripel?
In 1998, National Geographic judged Winkel Tripel's balance of area, shape, and distance distortion, particularly its more restrained stretching near the poles, an improvement over Robinson, which they'd used since 1988. It's remained their standard world map projection since.
What does 'Tripel' mean in Winkel Tripel?
'Tripel' is German for 'triple.' Oswald Winkel named it for his design goal: minimizing three kinds of distortion at once, area, direction, and distance, rather than eliminating any single one the way an equal-area or conformal projection does.
Is Winkel Tripel equal-area?
No. It isn't equal-area, conformal, or equidistant — it's a compromise projection that keeps a bit of error in all three at once. That means it shouldn't be used for measuring exact size, even though it looks visually balanced.
How is Winkel Tripel different from Robinson?
Both are compromise projections with a similar rounded look, but they're built differently: Winkel Tripel is the mathematical average of two other projections, the equirectangular and the Aitoff, while Robinson was tuned by eye using a table of values. Winkel Tripel generally handles polar distortion a bit better, which is part of why National Geographic switched to it in 1998.