blog/Open Source

After three years of limited conference attendance, we had a blast at State of the Map US this year! The conference was held in Richmond, Virginia, so a long trip for those of us on the West Coast, but close to home for others, now that we are fully remote. It was great to come...

This week, Stamen will be attending the State of the Map US conference in Richmond, Virginia! We’ve been attending these OpenStreetMap conferences (either the international State of the Map or this US-based version) for over a decade, and it’s always exciting to feel the energy of this lively community of open source mappers. The OpenStreetMap...

The myriad and complex challenges of addressing climate change can feel overwhelming, but when you combine the wealth and power of data available with communication strategies, it becomes possible to imagine a future where we are valuing conservation, relying on renewables, promoting efficient industrial, consumer, and agricultural processes, and not pumping greenhouse gasses and pollutants...

In a series of presentations and podcasts over the past year, Stamen cartographers Alan McConchie and Stephanie May have been exploring the world of contemporary online map making, and how Stamen Design has developed a uniquely collaborative way of working to build maps for a wide range of clients. In this short recorded conversation, we...

The modern cartographer needs a lot more than mapping software alone to be successful. Map solutions often require a breadth of knowledge across a team of capable people who know how to speak each other’s language. That’s something Stephanie May learned throughout her career in the geospatial industry. In this episode, the Director of Geospatial...

Every year in November, cartographers around the world take part in the 30 Day Map Challenge, spending their free time creating a new map each day, working through a list of different prompts posted by organizer Topi Tjukanov, and sharing their maps on social media at the #30DayMapChallenge hashtag.  This year, watching the stream of...

We are happy to share that we have begun work on improving MapLibre Native with technical leadership by Wet Dog Weather and funding from AWS. MapLibre Native is an Open Source SDK for rendering maps on mobile and other devices. We at Stamen rely on map renderers to display the beautiful maps we create for...

The other day at Stamen we were talking about a recent post by esri’s John Nelson called “Create a Light or Dark Version of Any Map in Two Seconds” using ArcGIS Online Map Viewer. So of course we were wondering how we could do the same for Mapbox GL styles. We often have to design...