blog/Client work

Navigating polarized views of AI in the immersive museum exhibit ‘The Connection Engine’

| 03.25.25

What is the Connection Engine? The Congruence Engine (later renamed Connection Engine) is a three-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in efforts to digitally connect industrial heritage collections across the UK. Using advanced digital tools such as AI, it links museum objects, archives, photographs, and more, enabling historians and curators...

Taking UCSF’s Health Atlas National

Stamen has been working with a team out of UCSF (University of San Francisco) Population Health and Health Equity to create and maintain their Health Atlas since 2019. You can read a bit about the initial launch in our blog post from 2020. In 2024 we had the opportunity to rebuild the Health Atlas and...

Vector Beeswarm Dot Density with Mapping Historical New York

| 02.07.25

Stamen has had the pleasure of developing Mapping Historical New York with Columbia’s Center for Spatial Research since 2021. We’ve written about it a few times, including most recently last fall, but here we wanted to expand on the technical implementation behind one layer on the map. The map displays census data in New York...

Refreshed global basemaps for Amazon Location Service

| 12.19.24

In March 2023, we shared the initial release of a set of global basemaps we designed for Amazon Location Service. In 2024, we undertook a design refresh to improve upon the original release, adding more detail and contrast to the suite of maps Amazon provides. To celebrate the release, we are excited to walk you...

Stamen at NACIS 2024

| 11.14.24

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2024 conference in Tacoma, WA was yet another fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts. Stamen was well-represented this year by Kelsey Taylor, Eric Brelsford, and Alan McConchie. This was a busy year for us – we presented five talks between the three of us! Now that...

Telling the Story of Changing Populations With Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas

Content in this post comes from our presentation at the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2024 Annual Meeting last week in Tacoma, WA. Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas visualizes New York City’s transformations during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries both in terms of population and landscape. Drawing on 1850, 1880, 1910, and...

Using interactivity and animation to bring data-driven mocks to life

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...

Visualizing ecosystems with MPG Matrix: A new approach to land management

| 06.27.24

Has anything like this ever happened to you? 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 component changes, the...

Designing the Avocado of Uncertainty

| 05.30.24

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...

What if you could track public health like the weather?

| 04.03.24

Imagine you’re going out of town this weekend. You check the weather forecast where you’re headed and see clear, sunny days, so you make sure you pack your sunglasses in your bag. Next, you check the public health trends where you’re going and see COVID-19 is high. So, you tuck away your face mask next...