Stephen Kennedy

#30daymapchallenge | Day 30 Makeover | Madison in 50 Maps! After four years of making maps of our incredible city, I’m very excited to share that I’m writing a book! As part of the @beltpublishing.bsky.social “50 Maps” series, I’ll be the author of the forthcoming Madison edition.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 28 Black | Road America 🏁 The Road America racetrack stylized like the ubiquitous black + white license plates we all know. Part of last year’s series, I got many requests to make this one a print, pushing me to figure out full bleed printing with solid black background.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 27 Boundaries | Not Madison Wisconsin was divided in the early–mid 1800s using the Public Land Survey System, carving the territory into 6mi square townships. As Madison grew, many nearby areas chose to incorporate to avoid annexation & keep control over local decisions.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 24 Places and Their Names | Street Name Origins While many streets are named for locals, several clusters hide bigger stories. Much of downtown is Doty’s tribute to signers of the US Constitution. In the Vilas neighborhood, a band of streets honors a few US Presidents.

Spread across the city are other clusters: a full suite of World War II airmen near the airport; a large patchwork named for Wisconsin counties on the West Side; a grouping of Native American words and names in Nakoma; and even a set of streets named from Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha.”

#30daymapchallenge | Day 23 Process | Process(ed) Meats! 🌭 Ok, a bit of a stretch for this prompt, sorry for being a ham… Crafted a stylization of the (now shuttered) Oscar Mayer meatpacking plant as detailed in a 1942 Sanborn Map of the area.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 22 Data: Natural Earth | The Great Islands Earlier this summer I finished this print version of my map from last year depicting our Great Lakes as islands. Been trying to learn more about lighting techniques in Blender—I think this was a big leap forward from 2024 version!

#30daymapchallenge | Day 21 Icons | Pickleball Courts Across Madison Earlier this summer I created this map for Madison Magazine cover story “The ultimate local guide to the game of pickleball” in their August issue. Over 100 courts and counting in the Madison area! latlong.shop/products/pic...

#30daymapchallenge | Day 19 Projections | Projected Growth City projections expect the Madison pop to surge by 115k residents (+42.8%) by 2050. The city is banking on infill & densification along BRT corridors via High Residential & Mixed-Use zoning to accommodate this growth. #yimby #madisonwi

#30daymapchallenge | Day 17 A New Tool | Which Side of Madison? A few weeks ago, I experimented with @mapbox.bsky.social GL Draw API to spin up a simple site where people can sketch and submit the boundaries of Madison’s different “sides.”

#30daymapchallenge | Day 16 Cell | Fill the Hill 🦩 For the uninitiated, it might seem strange that a flock of flamingos descends on @uwmadison.bsky.social campus each fall. The “Fill the Hill” tradition goes back to a 1979 prank, when the Pail & Shovel Party covered Bascom Hill with 1008 flamingos.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 12 Map from 2125(0 BC) | Glacial Lake Yahara This was supposed to be a map about the future 100 years from now… but instead let’s travel back 20,000 years to the last Ice Age! 🧊 Madison’s spectacular landscape was carved by the Green Bay Lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet.

#30daymapchallenge | Day 11 Minimal Map | Lakefront Access While #madisonwi is well known for its beautiful lakes, how much lakefront is actually accessible to the public? Curious to answer this, I dove into parcel ownership records. The findings reveal a stark contrast…

#30daymapchallenge | Day 10 Air | Airplane Mode A stylized depiction of the FAA Airport Diagram for Dane County Regional-Truax Field (MSN Airport). #madison #madisonwi #maps

I made this piece for the @madisonpubliclibrary @madisonbubbler #150artistsx150years exhibition, where each artist was assigned one of the past 150 years and words added to the dictionary that year to inspire a piece. I got 2002, when “Airplane Mode” entered the zeitgeist.

30daymapchallenge | Day 9 Analog | Counties of Wisconsin I started this map the night before my triplets were born… too anxious to sleep, so I put my energy toward cutting out hundreds of magazine letters to spell out the 72 counties of #wisconsin ✂️

#30daymapchallenge | Day 8 Urban | Original Plat Map of Madison A stylization of the original 1836 plat of #Madison commissioned by Doty, envisioning a capital city between the “Four Lakes.” Anchored by a square, the plan's radiating avenues are reminiscent of L’Enfant’s plan for Washington DC.