It’s National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day. Whether you use it for packaging, or as a stress-relief tool this stuff has been around since the late 1950s. Curiously, it was originally designed as a wall covering (has anyone tried that?) but as packaging it was IBM who first use it to wrap and ship computers. Anyway, here’s a quick map made of bubble wrap. It needed a couple of iterations but it’s a simple illustrative map, simply made. Which country are you going to pop first?!

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)

Can you make an illustrative world map that looks like it’s made out of bubble wrap. The overall layout should show two hemispheres, using typical arrangement with a western hemisphere map on the left, and an eastern hemisphere map on the right. Two small azimuthal projections of each polar region should appear in the bottom two corners with the Arctic in the bottom left, and the Antarctic in the bottom right. Each of the circular maps should also look like they are made of bubble wrap. Countries could maybe differ using differently sized bubble wrap but please avoid all colour – this should just look like a piece of bubble wrap. The title should read “The world – wrapped!”