Why obviously? 
(speaking for myself, not for ESRI - nice maps can be made in many applications, including, but not limited to, Illustrator, FreeHand, Corel, Photoshop, and yes, even ArcMap and ArcView 3.x) 
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Okay, now you are getting picky......but since you asked..............it's all about the quality of your line work, isn't it. Obviously Freehand can do the same thing, I am sorry but I am
not a Corel Draw fan...........I find it about as well designed as AutoCAD.......enough said...........I think that GIS is great but you still need to bring it into Illustrator or whatever your choice of vector graphics software is........to soften the final output and build in some appeal factor............Illustrator provides design freedom packaged within a designer friendly interface......... Obviously Photoshop is the tool of choice if you need to push pixels (Arcview 3.x - are you kidding me???)
Gill, one more thing -- I didn't intend these two examples as being presenting two different approaches, they are basically the same approach (but different information). Care to elaborate on your "data comparison [...] if it were presented in the first format", are you saying that plate carre projection (aka "geographic/unprojected") is easier for comparisons rather than Robinson?... ?
Frax,
I always think of the design of
any illustration this way: anything you choose to
add into your illustration, including perspective, shaded relief,colour,hatching, grayscale,linework,line symbology,icons,symbols,fonts,font weights,decorative elements,borders,the horizon,other planets, etc. just adds more information for the viewer to process. At the end of the day, what are you trying to get the viewer to do with the information you have presented to them? If you intend them to compare data between different maps, and show for example the extent of desertification in the world, compared with the extent of forests, you should probably dispense with extra fancy perspective projections and focus on the differing patterns that the deserts and forests create. A flatter 'unprojected' representation of the data would allow you to convey the information in the simplest format possible in that instance. Simply put, it just has fewer elements in it for your brain to
process or
read and you can instead focus on the spatial patterns created by the element in question (ie. deserts).
If however you were trying to show the exact
location of a desert, or that it occurs in certain geographic locations pertaining to certain types of topography, and your intent were that the reader focus on the map for an extended period of time and really absorb what is going on around these desert landscapes, then you would have to design your illustration a different way wouldn't you? You would probably want to include more shaded relief so that the person would understand that the desert in question is
west of a well-known mountain range for example. In North America most people have a good idea of where the Rockies are, so it is easy to undertand where the desert is located if it is shown in relation to the Rockies. The Rockies provide the known landmark, the context.
I am not saying Plate Carrée is necessarily best for anything, it was just an example of a better solution for a given problem, in a certain context.
G
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Sweden
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Canada
United States
). I created this map a couple of years using nothing but ArcMap.
Germany
