What Makes a Map More Beautiful?

Sep 18

3 min read

This project is part of the SMartS project, which promotes inquiry-based and interdisciplinary learning in schools (SMArtE method) and contributes to international research in art education.

INTRODUCTION

This study explored how colour combinations, tonal gradations, and brightness influence the perceived beauty of visual maps. The project was proposed by art teacher Giovanni Perillo to the students of class 1E at the Mastromatteo School.

The project was inspired by Sergio Lombardo’s research on Minimal Maps and Heawood Maps, in which mathematical rules, topology, and colour organisation are used to construct complex visual structures. Rather than relying only on artistic intuition, Lombardo’s work suggests that aesthetic balance can also emerge from precise relationships between colours, areas, and structural rules.

Starting from this idea, students investigated a simple question: what makes a map more beautiful?

They focused on two types of visual structures: Heawood Maps, in which each colour must be connected with all the others, and toroidal maps, whose opposite borders are connected as if the image continued on the surface of a torus.

RESEARCH QUESTION

Are maps with different hues more aesthetically pleasing than maps using a smaller number of hues with tonal gradations?

Does the dominance of light or dark colours influence aesthetic preference?

Does the effect of colour depend on the visual structure of the map?

METHOD

Students created a series of Heawood Maps and toroidal maps using Canva and later reproduced some of them with acrylic paint on canvas.

Two experimental comparisons were designed.

In the first experiment, the same map structures were coloured either with several different hues or with two hues organised through different tonal gradations.

In the second experiment, the same structures were presented with either a dominance of light colours or a dominance of dark colours.

A total of 33 middle-school students from Mastromatteo Middle School in Palo del Colle participated in the study. The images were presented through a Google Form, and participants rated the beauty of each map on a scale from 1 (not beautiful at all) to 7 (very beautiful).

RESULTS

The results did not show a single preference valid for all the maps.

For the comparison between different hues and tonal gradations, one Heawood pair received almost identical ratings, while in another Heawood pair the map with tonal gradations was rated more beautiful. A similar pattern appeared for the toroidal maps: in one pair the graded-colour version was preferred, while in the other pair the two versions received similar ratings.

A clearer pattern emerged for brightness.

The two Heawood Maps with predominantly light colours received higher beauty ratings than their darker versions. In contrast, the two toroidal maps with predominantly dark colours were rated more beautiful than the corresponding light versions.

DISCUSSION

The findings suggest that aesthetic preference does not depend on colour alone, but on the interaction between colour and visual structure.

Tonal gradations may make some compositions appear more balanced and visually coherent, but this effect was not found in every comparison.

The different results for light and dark colours are particularly interesting. The students proposed that the greater structural complexity of the Heawood Maps may work better with lighter colours, which could make the organisation of the image easier to perceive. By contrast, darker colours may give the simpler toroidal compositions a stronger and more visually engaging appearance.

These interpretations remain exploratory, but they suggest that the same colour strategy may produce different aesthetic effects depending on the structure in which it is used.

CONCLUSION

This experiment suggests that there is no single colour rule that makes every map beautiful.

The aesthetic effect of colour appears to depend on the relationship between hue, tonal variation, brightness, and visual structure. In this sample, tonal gradations improved some compositions but not others, while light colours were preferred for Heawood Maps and dark colours for toroidal maps.

Through the SMArtE approach, students transformed an artistic and mathematical problem into an empirical investigation: they designed visual stimuli, collected aesthetic judgments, compared data, and used the results to reflect on order, variety, balance, and beauty.

The project shows how art and mathematics can become a shared field of research in which aesthetic choices are not only created, but also tested experimentally.

Explore more student projects based on the SMArtE method (click on the link):