When you place a cone on the Earth and unwrap it, this results in a conic projection. Some of the popular conic projections are the Albers Equal Area Conic and the Lambert Conformal Conic projections. Both of these types of map projections are well-suited for mapping long east-west regions because distortion is constant along common parallels.

Conic projections are used for midlatitude zones that have an east–west orientation. Somewhat more complex Conic projections contact the global surface at two locations. These projections are called Secant projections and are defined by two standard parallels.

A Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC) is a conic map projection used for aeronautical charts, portions of the State Plane Coordinate System, and many national and regional mapping systems.

Conic projections often achieve less distortion at mid- and high latitudes than cylindrical projections. A further elaboration is the polyconic projection, which deploys a family of tangent or secant cones to bracket a succession of bands of parallels to yield even less scale distortion.

The Lambert Conformal Conic map projection is one of the most widely used map projections in the United States. The USGS uses this projection for many 7.5-and 15-minute topographic maps.

Conic projections are created by setting a cone over a globe and projecting light from the center of the globe onto the cone. Ptolemy's maps used many conic projection characteristics, but there is little evidence that he actually applied the cone or even referred to a cone as a developable map projection surface.

Conic projections project the Earth’s surface onto a cone, which is then unwrapped to form a flat map. These projections are particularly suitable for mapping mid-latitude regions, where the distortion of area, shape, distance, and direction is minimized along the standard parallels.

In a conic projection a paper cone is placed on a globe like a hat, tangent to it at some parallel, and a point source of light at the center of the globe projects the surface features onto the cone. The cone is then cut along a convenient meridian and

On any map projection, each point has a scale factor and a convergence. On conformal map projections, such as transverse Mercator and Lambert conformal conic, the scale factor is the same in all directions at any given point but is variable from point to point.

The British Columbia (BC) Albers Equal Area Conic projection is an example of an equal area projection. This is used province wide when mapping land-use data and is used by BC Environment in part because it represents the whole province on one projection plane.