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Creating Basemaps for Amazon Location Service

Kate Leroux, Stephanie May | Stamen Design

Seth Fitzsimmons | AWS

Cartography Protips

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We made maps! Nice.

Four of them. Niceeee!

Using OSM! Niceeeeeeee!

Stephanie

This past year, we partnered with AWS to design 4 map styles that are instant classics, if we do say so ourselves. The data is familiar to us, and most likely all of you (it came from OSM). But the strategies we deployed? Deserve more attention and thought.

TLDR on our message here today: maps work better when they have a purpose that is reflected in the design.

Using OSM data purposefully and selectively requires understanding deeply both the data, and what the map you are creating will be used for. Building purposeful maps with OSM data shows OpenStreetMap in the best light.

This may not be an intuitive perspective if you are here as a mapper, and therefore conditioned to push for data completeness, eg getting as much stuff on the map as possible — a worthwhile goal!

Thus we invite you to consider how showcasing the power of OSM can be achieved through other means.

On the top you can see the reference map style of what we created for AWS, suitable for placing point locations, or doing point-to-point navigation, and on the bottom you see the dataviz map style we created for AWS – suitable for overlaying with more complex data, as with a thematic map.

Kate is here to tell you a lot more. But first, here’s Seth to tell you more about what we were given in terms of a design brief.

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Seth

Talk about goals of using OSM, why AWS is interested in creating an easy to use instance of OSM, etc.

AWS launched Amazon Location Service a couple years ago with map styles from 2 partners: Esri and HERE. We wanted to provide an additional choice and saw an opportunity to create some first-party styles that we could use as foundations for future work. We wanted to highlight the opportunity that open data provide to a wider audience, and in this case, the open data is OSM. As a long-time member of the OSM community, I was particular excited by this.

We gave Stamen a really tricky design brief: build us a set of map styles that can be used for everything (who are AWS customers even, and who are their users) and can be used as part of migration efforts from other services. Stamen challenged us to refine that request, but it ultimately led to a discussion of what defacto map design standards have become. It’s about creating something classic and unobtrusive that highlight customer data and experiences vs. something distinctly recognizable. These styles are for AWS customers, not an “AWS map”, so we need them to blend in with any number of brands while making subtle callbacks to AWS as an opportunity to increase awareness. Brand subtlety (color + type).

Throw to Kate.

Looked for options where we could adapt existing styles and re-use existing tile schemas, partially to accelerate the project, but also to follow established standards and conventions.

We’re continuing to iterate on these styles, so if you (the audience) have things you’d like to see to

Adapting / building from existing tilesets + styles when you don’t have the ability to do full-stack cartography.

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How do you design a map for everyone, everywhere all at once?

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Cartography protips for better maps

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Design for the user

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2. Less is more

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3. Legibility is crucial

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4. Visually de-clutter

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1. Design for the user

2. Less is more

3. Legibility is crucial

4. Visually de-clutter

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Go forth and map!

Thanks to Kelsey Taylor and Katie Kowalsky