I was really excited by Jason Davies work on reprojected tile maps, this got me wondering, what projection would I want to use for a tile map, my answer: none of them.

Most map projections are from an era of paper maps not zoomable web maps, which means that they are all geared to a specific zoom level. For instance, when people say that mercator is a ‘terrible projection’ what they are actually saying is that mercator is a 'terrible projection for polar regions and for zoom levels that feature both equatorial and polar regions.’ In fact when zoomed in to a regional level mercator is going to be a pretty great projection for the vast majority of places with permanent human settlements. There are already projections created for specific areas which can make those local areas more accurately then standard mercator.

Meaning that if I wasn’t going to an all day music festival today I’d be looking into making a map: