Help Wanted: Artistic World Map Projections

[Jeff Spaleta]

Anyone interested in producing "artsy" map projections to replace the
map projection drawn by matplotlib in:
http://jspaleta.fedorapeople.org/Fedora-World-Maps/clientmap.png

Instead of having matplotlib draw the world map, I'd be interested in
having an artistic svg of the world that I could
reuse,deform,transform as needed over which I can to lay interesting
data representations like client density in the example URL.

Initially I'm in the market for a cylindrical map projection of the
whole world just like I'm having matplotlib draw now:
rectangular image
vertical axis = latitude: bottom is -90 top is +90
horizontal axis = longitude: left is -180 right is 180

But I'd also be interested in artistic regional maps, with smaller
lat/lon ranges.

-jef