Unintentional map art

It's not quite toying with map projections, but sometimes trial-and-error in choosing map symbology can lead to some pretty interesting errors...
You can barely make out the outlines of the United States (including Hawaii and Alaska), Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean under the blanket of graduated circles. In the end, we decided to go with an amended symbology, as we felt that the message conveyed by this map was a bit less informative that we would like.