Dataviz is clearly having a moment in the COVID-19 and social justice crisis — perhaps a definitive moment. Every time I turn around I see another chart, set of small multiples, dashboard. Some of them are great, some of them are just so-so, and some of them are actively dangerous, just like any other form of expression...
I was lucky enough to be invited to give the first talk at Visualized 2019 in San Francisco last week. Tamara Munzner, whose book we have at HQ, talked about encoding data. Vetria Byrd teaches dataviz to undergrad students and is seeking to broaden participation in the field. Steve Franconeri discussed principles for annotating visualizations...
I’ve been using OpenStreetMap (OSM) for over 12 years now, and to this day I’m still impressed and amazed by how far this project has come. The audacity of OpenStreetMap’s core ideals — that volunteers can create and maintain a detailed map of the world, and that this collaborative map would be more democratic and fair than...
“The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures.” — Manuel Lima, quoting computer scientist Ben Schneiderman “Data visualization is not your creative outlet; data visualization is making data understandable.” — OpenVizConf “[Before the Data Viz Project] there [was] no one place to go, where there are the correct answers for how the data visualizations work.” — Jeppe “Yes, you can design...
Sunrise through the smoke from Eve’s apartment Things have been pretty grim around here. The fires north of San Francisco have been just devastating for so many people. It’s intensely personal for the people who work here at Stamen, particularly those of us with deep roots in that part of the world. So many of...
Stamen has been at the corner of 16th and Mission Streets since 2001, and we’ve seen our share of changes in the neighborhood and on the Plaza. In some ways things are better than they’ve ever been, and in some we still face significant challenges. There are few places anywhere that our current societal dilemmas,...
At Stamen we’ve passed the last month with a growing sense of concern and unease at the direction that our current President is trying to take the United States. I’m concerned that this administration is recklessly careening forward to do what it can to undermine the checks and balances that have kept this democracy vibrant....
When it comes to making maps online there are many tools available, but they all have one thing in common: Geographic coordinates go in and a two-dimensional image comes out. Converting from geographic coordinates (longitude,latitude) to pixel coordinates is accomplished via a map projection. Most of the tools made for online map making focus on facilitating the navigation...