Stamen Design, a data visualization design studio, partnered with visual artists with the goal of seeking new, fresh ways of presenting cartographic information. Decoding their images requires a slightly different eye: the organic pathways depicted are less precise and more intimate. \xa0Similarly,prettymaps, a project byAaron Straup Copewith Stamen Design, are vibrant, dense, text-less images that require some exploration to get your bearings—however the geographical areas are immediately recognizable. Cope writes about these maps: “I'd like to generate map tiles that give you that same dizzy feeling you get when you look down at a city at night, from an airplane. We've spent so long fussing over the relentless details in cartography that we've sort of forgotten what things look like at a distance.” And don’t even get us started on charting the earth from amongst the stars—made possible by science, but with themost magical result. | 
