Thanks to a tweet from Tom Uglow, I happened across these wonderful watercolour maps from Stamen design. I've long been a fan of Stamen's visualisation work. They were one of FastCompany's 50 most innovative companies last year and have done some great work with MTV, MSNBC, BMW, Digg and LOCOG which I'm a fan of. But their work exploring cartography is particularly special (checkout the rather lovely Pretty Maps project as well). The watercolor maps "apply raster effect area washes and organic edges over a paper texture" in a process that reads like an artist describing how they created an original work of art. No surprise then, that the result is artful, organic and beautiful and has brought a very human warmth to something that is commonly treated in such a functional way. Truly exceptional.
The Shoal
- (almost) always thinking
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- Alan Moore
- angus whines
- Antony Mayfield
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- Mark Cridge
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- MediaFuturist
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- now in colour
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- That Gormandizer Man
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- TheWayoftheWeb
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- Will McInnes
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Fishy inspiration
- Ads of the World
- BigShinyThing
- Boing Boing
- Core77
- Creative Review blog
- Explore
- Flowing Data
- Future Perfect
- Futurelab
- Gaping Void
- information aesthetics
- It's Nice That
- Josh Spear
- Kottke
- Magculture
- Plannersphere Search
- PSFK
- RUBBISHCORP�
- swissmiss
- TED
- The Cool Hunter
- we make money not art
- Wooster Collective
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July 10, 2012
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I love how these have been created. Something normally so rigid and functional has been transformed into something actually quite beautiful.
Posted by: Peter | July 13, 2012 at 09:14 AM