blog/Design

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...

Maps and visualizations we’re keeping an eye on for Election Day, Part 3: Down-ballot races and electoral math

| 11.01.24

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...

Maps and visualizations we’re keeping an eye on for Election Day, Part 2: Indicators

| 10.31.24

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...

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...

Highway Shields On the Open(StreetMap) Road

Maps are fascinating things that show us a world that is both deeply personal and excitingly unfamiliar. As professional cartographers, we understand the joy of browsing parts of the world where you’ve never been before, but we also know that the first thing people usually do when they see a map is to find their...

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...

Why use interactivity in data design?

| 06.20.24

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...

the world of ice and fire, in maps

The World of Ice and Fire in Maps

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...

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...