Pollinate

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Acquiring physical art for a museum requires a lot of planning and care. But what does it mean to acquire a digital artifact? You might be surprised to learn it’s less like the acquisition of a painting and more akin to how a zoo acquires a living tiger. In this episode, Andrea Lipps shares some insight into the inherent fragility of and challenges in acquiring digital media in her roles as a Curator of Contemporary Design and the Head of the Digital Collecting Department at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Andrea Lipps & Curating Digital Artifacts

You can tell a good story with words. But a great story compels an audience through thoughtful visualizations. In this episode, Denise Lu walks us through her career in journalism—from her involvement in a student publication in college to her current role as Senior Graphics Reporter at Bloomberg News. We discuss what makes cartography and dataviz unique in a newsroom, the responsibility a journalist has when distilling complex events into a handful of graphics, and how giving a passionate PowerPoint presentation to your friends over Zoom could lead to an interactive article for one of the world’s largest media outlets.

Denise Lu & Telling Stories With Maps

As we emerge from three years of pandemic, social isolation, and political instability, how do we as humans cope with living in an uncertain world? How do we find joy and connection while acknowledging the inevitability and looming threat of climate change? In this podcast episode, Cartographer Jeffrey Linn introduces us to the concept of “Speculative Cartography”, an imaginative outlet for coping with the harsh realities we face through fantastical and satirical creativity.

Jeffrey Linn & Speculative Cartography

Collaborative tools for work and everyday life are more important now than ever before. Cartographer Mamata Akella brings “mapmaking thinking” to Felt, a fresh mapping platform that allows people to create maps together in real-time. With a portfolio of projects ranging from The National Park Service to Esri, Mamata has been a force in shaping the current state of digital mapping through brilliant design and innovative tooling. In this episode, we'll discuss the past, present, and future of collaborative cartography and how Mamata is helping Felt to push boundaries in web mapping for professional and casual mapmakers alike.

Mamata Akella & Collaborating with Maps

Cartography is a powerful tool for understanding the world and our place within it, but sometimes maps conceal more than they reveal. Throughout much of the history of cartography, maps have been used to forcibly claim territory and exploit the land, erasing the histories and claims of the people who lived there before. Native Land Digital is a new organization with the mission “to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see history and the present day.” In this episode we talk with Tanya Ruka, a Māori indigenous multimedia artist and designer who is the new Executive Director of Native Land Digital, about acknowledging the land we live on, how to map uncertainty, and the role indigenous knowledge plays in the fight against climate change.

Tanya Ruka & Mapping Native Lands

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 at Stamen discusses the nuances of open data and software; shares her philosophies on how a team of cartographers, designers, and developers can effectively collaborate to solve a geospatial problem; and provides an overview the suite of free and public tools that Stamen has created to facilitate such challenges.

Stephanie May & Interdisciplinary Cartography

The field of data visualization and information mapping has historical roots that date back far earlier than most people would imagine. Micronesian explorers created navigation charts with sticks and shells for thousands of years before the introduction of electronic navigation technology. Hundreds of years ago, humans had the means to mechanically collect data on everything from the pulse of ocean tides to the pulse of a living heartbeat. Data storyteller RJ Andrews is on a mission to showcase the work of the visionaries who carved the path for those of us working in the field of cartography and information design, and through his latest book series, “Information Graphic Visionaries” he has accomplished this mission with astounding success.

RJ Andrews & The History of Information Graphics

Twice a year, people in every hemisphere of the world adjust their clocks to adhere to Daylight Saving Time. Whether you prefer these biannual changes or you’d rather leave your clock alone, cartographer Andy Woodruff has made an interactive map to help you make your case when complaining about it on social media. In this episode, we discuss how maps can show us what we already want to see, the nuances of temporal cartography, and what our individual opinions on ideal sunset times reveal about how humans think about time itself.

Andy Woodruff & Griping About Daylight Saving Time

The intersection of the physical world and human consciousness is a playground for designers like Amira Hankin, who know how to leverage both to influence the behavior of an observer. Trained in visual arts and biology, Amira is a lead product designer at Stamen and one of the minds behind Stamen’s award-winning project 12 Sunsets. In this episode, we’ll discuss the brilliance and mystery behind Ed Ruscha’s photography of the streets in Los Angeles and how Amira threw the rulebook out the window to create a novel interactive archive for the Getty Institute.

Amira Hankin & Designing Without Rules

Quantitative data can help us understand what is going on in the world in a way that cuts through human error, bias, and injustice…right? Wrong.
Heather Krause is a trained mathematical statistician and data scientist who founded We All Count, which aims to align quantitative work with equity values. In this episode, Heather shares the ways that quantitative data is embedded with assumptions, biases, subjectivity, and power imbalances. And thankfully, she also shares why we shouldn’t give up hope despite this uncomfortable reality.

Heather Krause & Data Equity 101

An atlas is a guide to the world around us, perhaps most commonly seen as a collection of road maps to help one navigate across a country. But there are hidden patterns and phenomena that exist outside of what we see in the physical world. In this episode, authors James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti pull back the curtain to reveal a panacea of information in Atlas of the Invisible and how thoughtful visualizations alongside rich narratives can bring a new clarity to our understanding of the world.

James Cheshire, Oliver Uberti & The Atlas of the Invisible

What is a map, even? A cartographer might answer that question with a focus on the geospatial, whereas an information designer might focus on the conceptual. In this episode, author Carissa Carter offers a definition of “map” in her new book The Secret Language of Maps that is somehow broad and very specific at the same time, encompassing any visualization that conveys its message through spatial means. She shares a few lessons from her book on how to deconstruct maps, examining the pieces in detail to give us a better understanding at how to put them back together and use them to understand the people and phenomena they represent.

Carissa Carter & The Secret Language of Maps

In the “real world” a map is typically used to achieve a very practical goal more efficiently. But what happens when you enter a world in another realm? A world of pretend and imagination, devoid of the constraints of typical cartography? Well then you transcend the confines of practical maps and enter the delightful land of playful maps! Found in video games, board games, and your favorite fantasy novels, these playful maps allow us to tap into a unique form of spatial representation. Join us in this episode as Ross Thorn, Cartographer at Stamen Design, discusses the four pillars of playful map design and how we can apply those same principles to real world cartography to create more meaningful and more artful map experiences.

Ross Thorn & The Realm of Playful Maps

Shirley Wu began creating data visualization for the web shortly after the initial release of D3.js in 2012. She fell in love with the technology after realizing it offered her a way to combine math and art, her two greatest childhood fascinations. After making her way through the steep learning curve with help from the D3 community, she has spent the past decade learning out loud—generously sharing her creative and coding process with the world. Shirley started the collaborative blog datasketch.es in 2016 with Nadieh Bremer as a way to prioritize self-initiated projects and creative experimentation. Fast forward a few years and Data Sketches has become a book that features an foreword by Alberto Cairo. He describes Shirley and Nadieh as “wondrous eccentrics” who “wished to defy what is acceptable” and there isn't a better way to describe these two humans and their work.
Shirley Wu & Charting Your Own Way

Time. Space. Salt. No, these aren't a new take on necessary elements for cooking a delicious meal. They are some of the core themes that artist and author Christina Conklin explores in her work. Whether it's patiently waiting for saltwater to evaporate and form intricate patterns on a concrete floor or painting maps of climate change data on dried sea lettuce, she is inspired by the ocean and all the elements and organisms within it. In this episode, Christina discusses her book The Atlas of Disappearing Places and the beautifully painted maps that accompany insightful and thoroughly-researched stories that elucidate the intimate connectivity between humans, the ocean, and the planet we all call home.

Christina Conklin & The Atlas of Disappearing Places

Like any good product, a basemap is something most people don't notice when it's well-designed. Typically providing context beneath a navigation route or other geographic data, the basemap is arguably the most widely-consumed type of map in modern cartography. However, today's average map user might tilt their head when they hear the term "basemap" for the first time. In this episode, Stamen's lead cartographer, Alan McConchie, talks about his passion for sharing map knowledge with a humble approach and explores some examples of basemaps that help us to define this unsung hero of the mapping world.
Alan McConchie & The Maps Underneath

This episode of Pollinate introduces some of our recent client work with Columbia University’s Center for Spatial Research. A conversation between three members of the project team provides a deep dive into the ins and outs of using modern technology to create a historical experience centered around 100+ year old data. Dan Miller worked with Stamen’s Nicolette Hayes and Eric Brelsford to turn New York City census data from 1850, 1880 and 1910 into a fully explorable interface with enough curation and guidance to tell some meaningful stories.
Dan Miller, Eric Brelsford & Mapping Historical New York City

While there’s beauty in the act of observing the world, there’s more than a little artistry in the practice of deciphering and communicating it. Weaving several complex threads into a coherent visual narrative can be quite challenging and sometimes you need to find someone who can help you make sense of it all! In this episode, Catalina Perez, information designer and longtime Stamen collaborator, talks about her transition from teacher and architect to interdisciplinary designer and how she's carried her passion for explaining things into crafting visual communications.
Catalina Perez & The Art of Explaining Things

Combining scientific research with spiritual illumination is hard work. But when you're presented with an idea for a map of emotions by some of the world's top emotion researchers and the Dalai Lama himself, you rise to the challenge. In our inaugural episode, Stamen founder Eric Rodenbeck discusses the difficulties and breakthroughs of bringing such a task to fruition and his personal and professional journey leading up to the creation of the Atlas of Emotions.
Eric Rodenbeck & Mapping Emotions