blog/Conversations

Time. Space. Salt. No, these aren't a new take on necessary elements for cooking a delicious meal. They are some of the core themes that artist and author Christina Conklin explores in her work. Whether it's patiently waiting for saltwater to evaporate and form intricate patterns on a concrete floor or painting maps of climate change data on dried sea lettuce, she is inspired by the ocean and all the elements and organisms within it. In this episode, Christina discusses her book The Atlas of Disappearing Places and the beautifully painted maps that accompany insightful and thoroughly-researched stories that elucidate the intimate connectivity between humans, the ocean, and the planet we all call home.

Like any good product, a basemap is something most people don’t notice when it’s well-designed. Typically providing context beneath a navigation route or other geographic data, the basemap is arguably the most widely-consumed type of map in modern cartography. However, today’s average map user might tilt their head when they hear the term “basemap” for...

This episode of Pollinate introduces some of our recent client work with Columbia University's Center for Spatial Research. A conversation between three members of the project team provides a deep dive into the ins and outs of using modern technology to create a historical experience centered around 100+ year old data. Dan Miller worked with Stamen’s Nicolette Hayes and Eric Brelsford to turn New York City census data from 1850, 1880 and 1910 into a fully explorable interface with enough curation and guidance to tell some meaningful stories.

While there’s beauty in the act of observing the world, there’s more than a little artistry in the practice of deciphering and communicating it. In this episode, Catalina Perez, information designer and longtime Stamen collaborator, talks about her transition from teacher and architect to interdisciplinary designer and how she's carried her passion for explaining things into crafting visual communications.

Combining scientific research with spiritual illumination is hard work. But when you're presented with an idea for a map of emotions by some of the world's top emotion researchers and the Dalai Lama himself, you rise to the challenge. In our inaugural episode, Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck discusses the difficulties and breakthroughs of bringing such a task to fruition and his personal and professional journey leading up to the creation of the Atlas of Emotions.

Photo: Austin Liu Stamen recently launched a project with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles about the work of Ed Ruscha, who took hundreds of thousands of photographs of Los Angeles Streets from the back of a pickup truck over fifty years. This enormous archive of urban photographs is in the process of being meticulously...

The Berggruen Institute came to Stamen with the goal of bringing a fascinating global dataset to life: its Governance Index, which offers important insights into what makes a good government. The Index explores the relationship between democratic feedback, government competence, and the provision of public goods as measures of a good government. Over six years...

Yellow Warbler. Photo: Ben Collier/Audubon Photography Awards Stamen worked with the National Audubon Society to visualize the future of bird species across North America in the face of climate change. Eric Rodenbeck, CEO and creative director of Stamen, sat down to talk with the team to talk about this new work, Survival by Degrees: 389...

Thanks to Kelly Morrison for her help co-writing this post. Stamen was asked to create six maps using XYZ Studio, a new web app from HERE that allows users to create custom maps from large datasets. We sat down to talk about the process and the product (viewable at https://explore.xyz.here.com/gallery) with the map makers: Alan...

View the project live at http://www.superdiv.mmg.mpg.de/ Eric Rodenbeck: We’re here with Stamen’s Logan Williams talking about our recent work for the Max Planck institute visualizing super-diversity. What’s the project about? Logan Williams: This was a project initiated by professors at the Max Planck Institute and the University of British Columbia, to show how the nature...