Stamen DODOcases go international: introducing Paris, London and Tokyo

| 04.28.14

There’s something really lovely about carrying a new, sleek piece of technology in something that looks and feels like a book, and was made using old-school bookbinding methods. This old-meets-new quality of DODOcase is exactly why we at Stamen love them and are delighted to partner with them again! Just last year, Stamen’s maps appeared...

Stamen Speaking at State of the Map US

| 04.09.14

We’re delighted to be participating again in the American flagship OpenStreetMap conference, State of the Map US, as both sponsors and speakers. Here’s the lineup for Saturday: 9:45 AM: Building Businesses Using OpenStreetMap by Eric Rodenbeck 4:30 PM: Teaching Mapping to Geographers by Stephanie May (Urban Mapping) & Alan McConchie And for Sunday: 11:30 AM:...

New Work: A Conversation About California Parks

| 03.27.14

Today marks the official launch of parks.stamen.com, a project designed to highlight social media from parks and open spaces across California, created in partnership with Electric Roadrunner Lab. “Stories pour out of our parks every day. This project is a first step towards visualizing Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and Foursquare content using the actual boundaries of...

Visualizing a failed bitcoin market: The MtGox 500

| 03.20.14

In late February 2014 MtGox, one of the oldest Bitcoin exchanges, filed for bankruptcy protection. On March 9th a group posted a leak of MtGox data, which included the trading history of users from April 2011 to November 2013. We’ve been collaborating with Kai Chang & Mary Becica on some visualizations of this data; they’re...

The Parks Conservancy Map: The Baking of a Multi-Layered Data Cake

| 03.13.14

Back in December, we launched a new map for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The goal was to help people get to the parks and once there, around them, and to create a framework for Parks Conservancy staff, volunteers, and partners to add additional data and content as needed. At first, custom cartography wasn’t...

A Tale of Two Cities’ Maps: Dataviz is a Garden, not Architecture

| 02.26.14

This post is a check on both our ambitions and our processes. The uses of data visualization are different according to whether the goal is to communicate a specific thought for a single moment, e.g. as a poster, or the goal is to provide a durable tool for social change. It should be mighty safe...

Surging Seas is an Atlantic Favorite Map Of The Year

| 12.20.13

Today, The Atlantic Cities published their favorite maps of the year, and our work with Climate Central on Surging Seas tops the list: “the most frightening, important maps of the year come from Climate Central’s Surging Seas project, which offers an interactive map of all coastal areas of the Lower 48. In the discussion of...

Pinterest has maps! By us!

| 11.21.13

When I first discovered Pinterest about two years ago, my heart exploded and my mind was blown in the best possible way. One simple interface allows me to visually browse all of the beautiful stuff I find on the internet and beyond, and to organize it how I please. It feels friendly & welcoming — a place...

Field Papers in the field

| 11.19.13

Thing 1: “In September 2013, students in Webutuck High School art classes participated in a mapping workshop where they made maps of their lives — things they did, things they liked, things they didn’t like, and things they’d like to see. They drew the maps on Field Papers, which were scanned, edited, and turned into geotiffs and...

OpenStreetMap: Every Line Ever, Every Point Ever

| 11.06.13

At Stamen we use OpenStreetMap data in most of the maps we make, including our Watercolor, Toner, andTerrain map tiles. OpenStreetMap is a rich and growing dataset that has been created and maintained by hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world, and at Stamen we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without...