THINKING
Playing once again with orthographic views, I have been wanting to make a good map with the Global Human Settlement Layer. This one took a lot of color experimentation. I wanted to keep the terrain shading and some elevation tints while also still having some classification to the population density layer. In practice that meant going a lot darker and more saturated with the land colors so that the bright yellow and orange of the density data would pop out. I am still not entirely satisfied with the outcome, as it doesn't show much variation in the population data and probably under-represents areas that are very much populated but not densely so. That is actually why I chose the title "population centers" because it is probably more effective at showing urban clusters than a real measure of population density.
I sized this one at 16x9, partly because that gives a nice horizontal scope to a map, but also because it is a standard size for presentation slides (and Zoom backgrounds). I had been using 11x17 "tabloid" as a primary sheet size, and I still find that one of the best options for affordable printing. But there are still not enough 11x17 printers out there.
I also made a version with no text or population data in case it proves useful to someone as a basemap or Zoom background:
