Stamen Map Styles (Toner, Terrain, Watercolor)

スタメンの地図様式 / 2010s– / Style / Information Design

Stamen Design published three named basemap styles: Toner in high contrast black and white, Terrain built from hill shading and vegetation colour, and Watercolor made of washes with soft edges over paper texture. What changed with them is that the look of a basemap became a style you pick, not a set of colour settings you adjust. Cooper Hewitt acquired Watercolor, which was launched in 2012 and released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Toner is drawn in black and white with no grey midtones at all / In Watercolor the shore reads as the soft edge of a brush stroke, and the paper texture stays visible as you zoom / Watercolor renders water as blues mixed with turquoise and violet, and roads swing from orange to red brown / Labels, lines and ground are separate layers, so a tile set ships with any of them left off

Stamen Map Styles (Toner, Terrain, Watercolor) — Map rendered with Stamen Design's Watercolor tiles, 2022 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Map rendered with Stamen Design's Watercolor tiles, 2022 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Map rendered with Stamen Design's Terrain tiles, 2016 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 ／ Map using Stamen Design's black and white tiles (uMap), 2023 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5

Stamen Map Styles (Toner, Terrain, Watercolor) — Map rendered with Stamen Design's Terrain tiles, 2016 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 — Map rendered with Stamen Design's Watercolor tiles, 2022 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Map rendered with Stamen Design's Terrain tiles, 2016 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 ／ Map using Stamen Design's black and white tiles (uMap), 2023 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5

Dictionary entry

Best used for: When the basemap has to drop to black and white so strong colour can be layered on top of it · When a location map on an invitation or a guide should read as a painting on paper rather than a data panel
Type: Keep labels out of the basemap and add them back as a separate layer only when needed. Use one typeface and change its size by one step per zoom level.
Composition: Hold the same map as three layers: ground, lines, labels. Drop layers as the data on top gets denser, so the map itself carries less.
Material: Draw Toner as two values with no midtone. For Watercolor, scan washes painted on real paper and map them onto tiles through a scripted process, keeping the soft edges and the grain.
Caution: Lay thin lines and small type over Watercolor and they lose to the soft edges and the paper grain, so nothing stays readable.
Further study: the Watercolor palette as Cooper Hewitt describes it, water in blue with turquoise and purple, terrain in pink, brown and purple, buildings in a light purple grey / the split of derivatives maps.stamen.com lists, seven of Toner and four of Terrain / the 2023 partnership with Stadia Maps and the rebuild onto a vector tile base

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