Pollinate – Details, episodes & analysis

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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

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