We’ve made a lot of dark maps over the years at Stamen. We’ll often see dark maps from other designers or commercial providers and think, “why so dark?” We have a philosophy around designing a dark map for a particular client or use case, but we haven’t ever really spelled it out – either internally...
Welcome to the third and final part of our series on maps and data visualizations in advance of the 2024 U.S. General Election (if you’re just catching up, here are parts one and two). Today, we’ll close with discussion of Congressional races and the electoral college. I’m just a bill We’ve mostly discussed the presidential...
Welcome to part two of our series on maps and data visualizations in advance of the 2024 U.S. General Election (if you missed it, here’s part one on polling). Today, we’re discussing other indicators of political outcomes, including money in politics, changing demographics, key issues, and previous elections. Here comes the money Politics is all...
This is a perfect encapsulation of how we’re all feeling: unsettled. The presidential race has been neck-and-neck for months, even before President Biden decided to step off the ticket back in July. As the 2024 general election approaches, we thought we’d dig into some maps and visualizations of election data from across the media landscape...
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...
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...
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...
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...
One of our biggest projects last year was an update of our classic basemap styles, working hard with our partners at Stadia to adapt these maps to modern infrastructure and keep them running for years to come. As of October 31, we completed the transition and all our basemap users are now using Stadia’s infrastructure....
Mention the term “discovery phase” in a room full of product managers, analysts, executives, entrepreneurs, or developers, and you’re certain to garner myriad responses: everything from nods of agreement and appreciation to rolling eyes and exasperated sighs. In fact, in the design and development process of digital products, there’s perhaps no phase that is more...