A colorful abstract map of Tokyo
A colorful abstract map of Beijing
A colorful abstract map of New York
Nobody asked, but hey we just enabled HTTPS on Pretty Maps, an old project from 2010 by Stamen alum Aaron Straup Cope (@thisisaaronland.bsky.social). Amazing that it still works!
Enjoy it here: prettymaps.stamen.com
#ttmprettymaps #prettymaps #maps #cartography #design #flickr
Hello! Sorry for the late reply. No, crimespotting has been down for a long time sadly.
...His students have learned a lot by asking AI image generators to do things like artificially age a painting or a piece of cloth.
“I have a couple students that are adamantly opposed to using any kind of AI in their work. Some students are embracing it 100 percent. But no one wants to make slop.”
“It was amazing for a minute there, when you could get a picture of a cat dressed in an Edwardian costume hanging from a parachute or whatever, but there’s no joy in that,” Rodenbeck said. “It’s gross.”
But it’s not all slop, he said...
"... For some in the arts, there is more nuance."
"Eric Rodenbeck, a lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Design, said he has as much contempt as anyone else for AI when it’s used to make zany images that serve no practical purpose." ...
Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck was quoted in the @bostonglobe.com this week: "From college campuses to political campaigns, an anti-‘AI slop’ revolt has arrived" www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/18/m...
A photo of Eric Rodenbeck overlaid with the text: Parsons MS Data Visualization Lecture Series 5/2/2026 7pm 66 W 12th St There's a Crack in Everything: Gaps, Seams, and the Work of Knowing.
A black and white visualization of neurons in the human brain
A map visualization showing the Ed Ruscha archive of historic photos of Sunset Boulevard
A colorful abstract map showing private bus shuttles between San Francisco and Silicon Valley
Feb 5 in New York City: Eric Rodenbeck will be giving a talk at Parsons School of Design at @thenewschool.bsky.social, titled "There’s a Crack in Everything: Gaps, Seams, and the Work of Knowing"
Free registration here: event.newschool.edu/ericrodenbeck
A text-only slide with the words "Re-imaging the Archive: MDes Open Project 9704 / Spring 2026 / Harvard GSD"
An image of previous year's student work overlaid with the text: "Participants will engage directly with curators of these institutions during the workshop"
An image of previous year's student work overlaid with the text: "This is not a programming class. You don’t need a computer science background to visualize data."
An image of previous year's student work overlaid with the text: "A selection of leading designers and curators will participate as guest lecturers and participate in critiques."
Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck has two upcoming workshops at the Harvard Graduate School of Design:
"Re-imagining the Archive" and "AI Design for Ocean Solutions".
Read more here: stamen.com/two-upcoming...
A map of the US overlaid with the text: "How did we visualize the complex structure of the Catholic Church?"
A colorful map of the US Midwest showing states divided into distinct subareas labeled with roman numerals and church icons, overlaid with the text: "Read how we designed and built the first official interactive map of US Catholic dioceses, on the Stamen blog now!"
Read how we visualized the complex structure of the Catholic Church in the US for their first official interactive diocesan map, available now on the blog at stamen.com/exploring-th... #cartography
Lately Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck has been teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Here is the studio report from the workshop he taught last spring, covering the use of AI in design, the nature of archives, and a pedagogy of iteration vs perfection: www.gsd.harvard.edu/publication/...
A black-and-white headshot of a woman on a yellow background, overlaid with the text "Elected!" and "NACIS: North American Cartographic Information Society"
A big congrats to our own Kelsey Taylor, just elected to the Board of Directors of the North American Cartographic Information Society! For the next 2 years, Kelsey will help guide the direction of one of the most important & beloved organizations in the mapping community.
nacis.org/our-society/...
A dark-colored terrain map overlaid with the text "What makes a dark map style work?"
A montage of dark-colored maps overlaid with the text: "The art and science of dark mode cartography, on the blog now"
In our latest blog post, we share our philosophy of dark mode basemaps. What are dark maps good for, and why might you need one? How do you design a dark mode map that is both beautiful and functional? All this and more, now on the blog at stamen.com/stamens-dark...
A screenshot of a black and white map with encroaching shadows around the margins. Overlaid on the map is the text "Dark greetings! (bat emoji) We took our iconic Toner map style..."
Another screenshot of a dark map, with the image of two vampires from the TV show "What We Do In The Shadows". Text overlaid on the image says "...into the darkness with two new variations"
Screenshot of a dark map with the text "Read more about Toner Dark..."
Screenshot of a dark map with the text "... and Toner Blacklite on the Stamen blog"
What do we map in the shadows?
Our iconic Toner map style, now in dark mode! Read about how we developed "Toner Dark" and "Toner Blacklite" on the blog now: stamen.com/what-we-map-....
Both styles are available from our friends at @stadiamaps@en.osm.town here: stadiamaps.com/explore-the-....
A mysterious map of glowing dots and clouds, overlaid with the text "Knowing where something is isn’t the same as caring where something is..."
A mysterious map of a cloud of white dots receding into the distance, overlaid with the text "...but sometimes..."
A diagram of a human head showing that the previous images were all different visualizations of the brain. The diagram is overlaid with the text "...seeing is believing."
A montage of brain visualizations and charts, overlaid with the text "Learn more about mapping the human brain on the blog!"
How is a brain like a mountain? Read "Brain Cartography: Mapping a place that everyone knows, but (almost) no one has ever been" here: stamen.com/brain-cartog...
A photo of several people sitting around tables working on laptops at a mapping workshop. Overlaid on the image is the text "Read about our recent data viz for climate science workshop on the blog now"
Stamen Lead Cartographer + Designer Kelsey Taylor ran a data viz and mapping workshop at the recent USGS Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Summer Symposium in Urbana, IL. Read more about the workshop at stamen.com/data-visuali...
#dataviz #design #maps #science #climate
A map showing subway lines in DC with the text overlaid: "We designed maps for transit-first navigation in Washington, DC"
A zoomed-in map of some subway stations and nearby points-of-interest, with the text overlaid: "Read about our collaboration with MetroMatch on the blog"
Stamen recently collaborated with MetroMatch, a transit-first navigation tool focused on identifying destinations within walking distance of transit in U.S. cities. Read about how we redesigned their map for Washington, DC on the blog.
stamen.com/navigate-you...
#maps #transit #WashingtonDC
A montage of maps overlaid with the text "Celebrating the 21st anniversary of OpenStreetMap with a new post"
A montage of maps overlaid with the text "looking back on Stamen and OpenStreetMap through the years"
This month #OpenStreetMap turns 21!
To mark the occasion, we dug into our archives to finish part 3 of Stamen's personal history of OSM, covering the years 2016 to the present. Check it out on our blog, including links to part 1 and 2 of the series:
stamen.com/part-3-our-b...
A section of a "galaxy brain" meme about basemaps, overlaid with the text "Check out our recap from State of the Map US 2025"
A montage of maps overlaid with the text "Read more about the work we presented in Boston on the blog!"
Read our recap of presentations, inspiration, and upcoming projects from the 2025 @stateofthemapus.bsky.social conference last month in Boston on the blog: stamen.com/stamen-at-st....
Congrats to the Getty Research Institute team for this impressive work of scholarship!
The entire publication is online and open-access, including videos, visualizations, zoomable images, and more.
The cover image of an online book with the text "Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles: ARTIST IMAGE ARCHIVE CITY" In the background is a photo of a car from the 1970s with rectangular buildings and palm trees in the distance
A map of Los Angeles in the style of a Thomas Guide atlas, with 3D extruded lines indicating the streets photographed by artist Ed Ruscha
A map zoomed in on Sunset Boulevard with marks along the road indicating the location of photographs in Ed Ruscha's archive, some of which are annotated with the word "tree" where computer image recognition software detected a tree
A map of Sunset Boulevard highlighting two locations where Ed Ruscha photographed the same billboards over several decades
The Getty Institute just launched an online publication “Ed Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City", which includes several map visualizations we created to explore the vast digitized collection of Ruscha’s photographs of LA over the years: www.getty.edu/publications/ruscha/
A montage of maps, overlaid with the text "Saying farewell to one of our beloved old map tools"
A montage of maps, overlaid with the text "with a new map showcasing 12 years of cartographic creativity"
A dark map of the world showing scattered yellow dots everywhere, overlaid with the text "We visualized a half million user-generated images created with our open-source tools."
A black-and-white collage of maps overlaid with the text "Explore the archive yourself, and read our tribute to Map Stack on the blog"
New on the blog: we say goodbye to one of our oldest mapping tools... by creating a new map to visualize an archive of a half million user generated images! Read "Farewell, Map Stack" here: stamen.com/farewell-map...
Join us at the @stateofthemapus.bsky.social conference this Friday to hear more.
Today and tomorrow, Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck will be speaking at the Data Art Symposium at Harvard University!
Check out the livestream here: data-art.info/livestream
And the schedule of events here: data-art.info/schedule
How open source tooling empowers our cartography debugging workflows...
by allowing for map style comparison...
...and interactive data viz to see your map from a different perspective.
Learn more about how we upgraded how we debug on the blog
Stamen has designed a lot of maps across the carto industry over the years. Read about how Stamen uses tooling to debug maps, as we explore how data, tiles, and stylesheets work together to make beautiful maps.
Read now at stamen.com/debugging-10...
Telling the story of how technology and people-power unlocked new insights for historians
Read more about The Connection Engine for Science Museum
We worked with the Science Museum to develop an interactive exhibit about The Congruence Engine, a 3-year research effort to digitally connect industrial heritage collections across the UK. Read more about our collaboration, focused on the industrial city of Bradford:
stamen.com/navigating-p...
Learn more about the data analysis and visualization tool we helped build for Stanford University's Natural Capital Project:
naturalcapitalproject.stanford.edu/news/natural...
It’s that time of year! Love it or hate it, #DaylightSavingTime is upon us, and we are listening to our podcast episode from a few years ago with cartographer @awoodruff.bsky.social about his Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool. Give it a listen here:
stamen.com/andy-woodruf...
Now on the blog: how we expanded UCSF’s Health Atlas from California (which we first collaborated on in 2019) to the entire US in 2024, including data and design updates across the entire tool.
Read now at stamen.com/taking-ucsfs...
#maps #basemaps #design #cartography #ucsf #health #choropleth
Master in Design Studies presents OPEN CONVERSATIONS ENGAGING SPACES: EXPLORING DIGITAL + ANALOG RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENTS Allen Sayegh, Eric Rodenbeck, and Marina Otero in conversation with K. Michael Hays, John May, and Malkit Shoshan. TUESDAY FEBRUARY 18, 2025 4:00-6:00 PM GUND HALL, STUBBINS ROOM 112
Today at Harvard, our own Eric Rodenbeck joins a conversation with Harvard University Graduate School of Design on "Engaging Spaces: Exploring Digital + Analog Responsive Environments"
A map of New York overlaid with the text "How we did it: vector beeswarm dot density data visualization"
A zoomed in screenshot of a spiral of colored dots with the text: "Learn more about the technical details on the blog now"
On the blog: behind the scenes details on how we’ve migrated Columbia University’s Mapping Historical New York from raster to vector rendering. Read it now on the blog at stamen.com/vector-beesw....
#maps #basemaps #design #cartography #columbia #historicalmaps #newyork
