Custom Basemap: Calder's World

Calder’s World is a Mapbox Basemap inspired by the art of Alexander Calder, a 20th century artist known for his kinetic sculptures. I particularly wanted to capture the feel of Calder’s sheet metal mobiles. To do this I created icons reminiscent of the shapes in his mobiles, and used the color scheme used throughout many of his works (red, blue, yellow, and charcoal black). For labels, I chose the font, League Spartan which is “based on early 20th century American geometric sans serifs” because it was similar to a typeface used frequently by Calder. 

Creating this basemap was a helpful exercise to shake up my design tendencies. While I typically choose muted color schemes to focus in on the important thematic elements of a map, it was fun to do the exactly opposite of that with this basemap. Explore the basemap >>>