WHEN YANKO Tsvetkov, a Bulgarian designer and illustrator, was trying to explain to a friend the complex social, political and economic backdrop to the “gas supply war” between Russian and Ukraine in 2009, he simply drew up a map of Europe with all the country names replaced by stereotypes.
Thus Russia was labelled “Paranoid Oil Empire” and Ukraine as “Gas Stealers”. Warming to his task he had Norway as “Selfish Fisherman Land”, Turkey as “No YouTube Land” and the Baltic Sea as “The Gulf of Abba”. The map, entitled, “Where I Live” was widely circulated on the internet.
"The first stereotype map was done as a joke for my friends," says Tsvetkov. "But it got spread around so much that Süddeutsche Zeitungdecided to use it in a two-page publication about the European parliamentary elections in June 2009. At that point the map was already very popular, both online and offline, so I decided to expand the idea and create additional maps, focusing on national stereotypes. In the next year and a half that followed, I published one map every three months. The project is still not finished; there are many new ideas that I am considering."
The subsequent maps – “Europe According to the USA” (in which Iceland is called “Wikileaks”, Spain is “Mexico”, Italy is “Godfathers”, France is “Smelly People), and then Europe according to France/Germany/ Russia etc became so popular that more than half a billion internet users have now seen them. (Go to Tsvetkov’s page: www.alphadesigner.com and look for “Mapping Stereotypes”.)
“I really couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about in the beginning,” he says. “I realised people found my maps entertaining, but the interest exceeded everything else I have received in my life. Now I know that talking about prejudices is really necessary and people have the need to do it one way or the other.”
Despite the crude caricatures portrayed, Tsvetkov says the feedback has been predominantly positive: “I think I received about a dozen negative comments and messages, mostly from people offended by the labels of their countries. The rest, which is an enormous amount, comes from people with a good sense of humour,” he says.
“Maybe it’s because they see that I also include myself and my nation in the jokes and nobody is singled out. I even receive letters from people who suggest lists of prejudices according to their own country and ask me to make a map. Others don’t need that much assistance – they publish their own version and just e-mail me a link to it. The response is really amazing. I can barely find the time to answer everybody. One thing that surprises me a lot is some people’s attempt to overanalyse the maps. I always try to mention that they shouldn’t be taken seriously and their function should be closer to a caricature rather than to an educational atlas.”
