Cork Globe for Pinpointing Your Travels by Suck UK

Ever felt like delving into the origins of Google Map’s skeuomorphic pins? Fed up with the distortion of Mercator’s map projection but find Fuller’s Dymaxion Map impractical for cross ocean voyages? Want to recreate that scene from Dr Dolittle to determine your next destination through a chance pinprick without permanently disfiguring a globe? Then Suck UK’s latest offering could be right up your street.

The Cork Globe allows you to mark down the place you’ve visited, planned future destinations and the locations of friends through the use of colour coded pins. The set sold by Suck seems to only offer red pins but these are fairly standard cork board pins and other colours should be easy to find. The pins could also be connected with simple string to plot particular routes and reminisce on past expeditions.

While certainly being a bit of a novelty this cork offering does also serve as a fairly decent globe (although unfortunately lacking in any sort of labels). The use of a globe for planning our travels gives us a better idea of relative distances and is invaluable for round-the-world trips. Does it really feel like Australia is on the opposite side of an entire planet when it’s just sat there at the bottom right corner of a world map?

The Cork Globe is based on an initial design by Chiaki Kawakami which she went on to refine for production by Suck UK. It’s priced at £100 (which in my opinion is relatively high for what it is) and so unfortunately likely falls outside the price ranges that most people would typically allocate for these sort of gifts.

If you’re looking for other ways to mark off countries you visit then you might also be interested in this scratch off foil world map or the free iOS app been.