science

Stamen Design

Stamen Design is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stamen Design rather than just read about it. In short: Stamen is a data visualization design studio based in San Francisco, California. Its clients include National Geographic, Facebook and The Dalai Lama.

Key takeaways

Stamen Design belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stamen Design to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stamen Design from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stamen is a data visualization design studio based in San Francisco, California. Its clients include National Geographic, Facebook and The Dalai Lama.

History Stamen was founded in 2001 by Eric Rodenbeck. In 2003, Michal Migurski joined Stamen as a partner, remaining until 2013. In 2006, Shawn Allen became the studio's third partner, remaining until 2014. In 2014, writer and UCLA professor Jon Allan Christensen joined Stamen as a partner and strategic advisor.

Projects In 2017 Stamen was commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum to design and develop Big Glass Microphone, an interactive, online visualization of the acoustic vibrations picked up by a fiber-optic cable buried beneath a road at Stanford University. In 2016 Stamen designed an Atlas of Human Emotions for Paul Ekman and The Dalai Lama. The New York Times quoted Paul Ekman as saying “It is a visualization for what we think has been learned from scientific studies. It's a transformative process, a work of explanation.” In 2015 Stamen partnered with Hipcamp and GreenInfo Network to develop CaliParks, a bilingual, statewide, parks search engine that brings together park boundary and management data in California with social media content from Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare. Stamen is the developer and maintainer of Field Papers, an open source tool for humanitarian mapping that lets users annotate OpenStreetMap in areas without internet connectivity. Field Papers was supported by grants from USAID and the Hewlett Foundation in conjunction with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. In 2014 Stamen designed new default basemaps for CartoDB, using OpenStreetMap data. These map tiles are available for unlimited use under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Awards and grants

In 2017 Stamen won the National Design Award for Interaction Design, presented by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. At the Information is Beautiful Awards in 2012, Stamen won the Gold Award for Data Journalism and the Most Beautiful award for its "Home & Away" project for CNN. In that year Stamen also won the Information is Beautiful "Best Studio" prize. In 2010, Stamen was awarded a US$400,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to create a series of freely-available web maps based on OpenStreetMap data. The resulting map tiles (called Toner, Watercolor, and Terrain) are available for unlimited use under the Creative Commons Attribution license and are compatible with open source mapping libraries such as Leaflet and OpenLayers. The service is widely used in mapping projects around the world. In 2021, "Watercolor" joined the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum collection, becoming the first live website to do so.

Notable alumni Rachel Binx Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso George Oates

See also Web mapping Data visualization OpenStreetMap CartoDB Mapbox

References McMillan, Sam (August 28, 2019). "Artificial Intelligence". Communications Arts. Menlo Park. Retrieved August 30, 2019. Saplakoglu, Yasemin (July 22, 2017). "Is the ground beneath the Stanford campus listening to you?". San Jose Mercury News. San Jose, CA. Retrieved July 1, 2020. Schwab, Katharine (June 1, 2017). "The Smart City Already Exists—Under Our Streets". Fast Company. New York, NY. Retrieved June 2, 2017. Bliss, Laura (May 30, 2017). "Beneath a Bustling University Campus, a Big Cable Is Listening". The Atlantic CityLab. New York, NY. Retrieved June 2, 2017. Anderton, Frances (May 17, 2017). "Stamen brings artistry to data visualization — and wins Cooper Hewitt Design Award". KCRW. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved June 2, 2017. Hardy, Quentin (January 6, 2014). "A Makeover for Maps". New York Times. New York, NY. Retrieved October 23, 2015. "Finance: Nasdaq and the colour of money". Financial Times Magazine. July 26, 2013. Retrieved October 23, 2015. Madrigal, Alexis (June 10, 2013). "Stamen Design Reveals an Instagram for Maps: A Radical, Beautiful New Tool". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 23, 2015. Dickey, Megan Rose (October 12, 2012). "Here's A Map To Silicon Valley's Cushy Private Buses". Business Insider. Retrieved October 23, 2015.

External links Stamen Design - English

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stamen Design

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stamen Design claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stamen Design before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stamen Design ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stamen Design

In research: Stamen Design appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stamen Design in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stamen Design is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Companies based in San Francisco, Design companies of the United States, Web mapping, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stamen Design outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stamen Design in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stamen Design means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stamen Design out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stamen Design in simple terms?

Stamen is a data visualization design studio based in San Francisco, California. Its clients include National Geographic, Facebook and The Dalai Lama.

Why does Stamen Design matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stamen Design?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stamen Design.