blog/Design

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...

Pulling back the curtain on economic disparity with the Distressed Communities Index

| 03.26.24

In August 2023, Stamen started working with the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan public policy organization dedicated to forging a more dynamic and inclusive American economy. The focus of our work was their keystone product, the Distressed Communities Index (DCI) interactive dashboard.  The DCI highlights economic disparities in U.S. communities at several geographic levels,...

Year ten at Stamen

| 03.11.24

Every once in a while I like to write a blog post outlining what I’ve been up to over the previous few years here at Stamen Design. Last year (2023) I reached a bigger milestone with the studio, having been with the studio for an entire decade. Wow! Most of the time, it feels like...

Helvetica is more than a font, it’s a state of mind

| 01.30.24

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....

Visualizing Japanese American Confinement with Densho

| 12.19.23

Back in 2021, Stamen began working with Densho, a nonprofit committed to documenting the oral histories of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated on American soil during WWII. Together, we worked to tell the stories of the 125,000 imprisoned individuals through a map-based visualization called Sites of Shame.  In 2023, we collaborated again to develop Manzanar...

Stamen at NACIS 2023: A Recap of Creative Cartography and Community

| 11.06.23

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2023 conference in Pittsburgh was a fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts. Stamen was well-represented this year by Kelsey Taylor, Eric Rodenbeck, and Ross Thorn. I’m developing a history with NACIS, having given my first talk there last year on cartography and the golden ratio, and...

Stamen x Stadia series: Terrain behind the scenes

| 10.17.23

When we started thinking about how to recreate Stamen’s iconic Toner and Terrain raster styles with vector data, Toner seemed like it would present the bigger challenge. Achieving the right hierarchy and visual balance of that style felt like a monumental task to me, an ardent admirer of Toner for many years. Terrain was less...

Stamen x Stadia: harnessing modern vector cartography

Not long after Stamen created our first Toner, Watercolor, and Terrain styles, a new technology came along: vector maps. Though it still used the paradigm of dividing up the world into map tiles, vector maps divide up the data into pre-processed chunks instead of the map itself. In vector cartography, the map is drawn dynamically...

Dreamy, aspirational cartography with Spherical

| 08.10.23

Earlier this year, Stamen collaborated to design a custom branded basemap with our friends at Spherical, a creative technology design and integrative research studio supporting projects regenerating the health and integrity of Earth’s living systems. In partnership with ARLA, Spherical supports community workshop facilitators with their Living Infrastructure Field Kit, a space to explore the...

The Data Visualization Discovery Phase Made Clear, Clear, Clear, in Business Language!

| 06.12.23

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...