As designers, our imaginations are the most powerful tools in our toolkit. They help us bring static mocks to life by thinking about how a user might interact with our ideas. Imagination can also hold us back sometimes, as it can be very challenging to communicate these interactions to others. It can also only get... The post Using interactivity and animation to bring data-driven mocks to life appeared first on Stamen ..read more

Maps are fascinating things that show us a world that is both deeply personal and excitingly unfamiliar. As professional cartographers, we understand the joy of browsing parts of the world where you’ve never been before, but we also know that the first thing people usually do when they see a map is to find their... The post Highway Shields On the Open(StreetMap) Road appeared first on Stamen ..read more

Last year we rebuilt our well-loved Stamen basemaps from scratch, re-creating them on a totally new tech stack in partnership with Stadia Maps. This was a bittersweet and challenging process, trying to build new styles that matched the aesthetics of the old maps, while still giving us a fresh start to keep these maps running... The post The Many Lives of Null Island appeared first on Stamen ..read more

Last Friday I had the pleasure of being hosted by Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Curators Matilda McQuaid, Andrea Lipps and Cindy Trope at a visit to Cooper Hewitt in New York City. They’ve acquired our watercolor maps into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian! And they’re on display in the galleries. So I called up my... The post Acquired! a curator-led tour of Cooper Hewitt’s new show, featuring an interactive installation of Stamen’s watercolor maps appeared first on Stamen ..read more

by Robbyn Layne A designer and three scientists walk into a bar… well, actually, it wasn’t a bar. And what happened when they sat down together wasn’t a joke! It was an inspiring testament to the power of data visualization and synergistic collaborations that merge beauty with utility, or rather, design with science. Eric Rodenbeck, founder of the data visualization and mapmaking studio Stamen, sat down with three scientific researchers who collaborated with his team to create and implement the VACS Explorer app—a visualization tool designed to promote research behind the State Department’s V ..read more

Has anything like this ever happened to you? A type of fish you used to eat years ago is harder to come by and more expensive Your garden used to thrive, but now it’s being destroyed by a new insect You don’t see the flora and fauna you used to and instead are seeing large abundances of one or two new species It might not seem like it, but these stories are likely the impacts of a poor resource management decision. Ecosystems are composed of an extremely complicated web of plants, animals, microscopic organisms, fungi, people, precipitation, and so much more. When the abundance of one compon ..read more

Show don’t tell. It’s what we are taught from a very young age and continue to employ everyday, be it at school, work, or even in conversations with our friends. This phrase has stood the test of time as being the most powerful way to convey information. Actions, words, thoughts, senses, feelings, and even data are more powerful ways of telling a story rather than through one’s summarization or description. When it comes to data, visualization is the most powerful tool we have in our toolkit to tell a story. These types of visualizations can be static (or animated), like infographics, illustra ..read more

image via the Game of Thrones Intro Creator As self-proclaimed map nerds, there’s nothing like a crossover of nerdy subjects to provoke thought and discussion at Stamen. The new season of House of the Dragon premieres this Sunday, June 16 on HBO and Max in the U.S. and we thought this would be the perfect moment to finally talk about cartography in The World of Ice and Fire. You may be familiar with this universe from HBO’s Game of Thrones and/or House of the Dragon, or perhaps you’ve taken the plunge and read the book saga that started it all, called A Song of Ice and Fire. There are several ..read more

Perhaps you’ve noticed over the past decade how that “once in a century” forest fire or hurricane seems to be appearing in the news more often than its name would imply. With temperatures increasing due to climate change, natural disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity across the world. In these situations, it’s of the utmost importance that first responders can get on the scene to mitigate damage and aid people as efficiently as possible. CrisisReady and DirectRelief aim to do just that by advancing data-driven decision-making in various types of emergencies worldwide, from f ..read more

It’s been a year of ups and downs—quite literally if you’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) like we have. The long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild (BotW) was one of the top-rated games to release in 2023 and surpassed the seemingly impossible standard set by its predecessor. Last year, we evaluated the in-game map of BotW in anticipation for the new game and we’ve spent the year playing it and critically examining the map.  While a game might be great and the map might be beautiful, it all comes down to how well the map serves the game as a tool of play ..read more