Marmota Maps was founded by Lana Bragin and Stefan Spiegel from Hamburg.
Both share a passion for geography, design, and the graphic presentation of data and information. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015, they published the first cross-border map of the Alps, including all ski resorts. They have since sold over 10000 maps and 50000 books, and they keep developing new design ideas and creative products together. Driven by their love of the mountains, Marmota Maps' primary focus remains on the Alpine region. In more than ten years, though, the Hamburg marmots have turned again and again to other topics and regions.
We bring information and design together into something new.
What we set out to do: we put information into a form that makes it easier to understand and opens up new insights. In doing so, we look for the presentation that makes connections visible without simplifying the complexity of the content.
With maps, we bring existing layers of information together so that new insights become possible. One example is the arrangement of ski resorts by size and outline: looking at it, you understand the geography of the Alps better, and also how much each individual ski resort matters. You can place yourself, and discover places you have never been.
We design infographics so that complex subjects become easy to grasp. We sorted Alpine cheeses by fat content and ripening time, for example – and you see at once how little fat sour-milk cheeses contain, and that French cheeses work up their flavour with a great deal of fat.
With illustrations, we take care to bring out the essential features of the object illustrated without losing the overall view. For us a depiction has worked when something comes across. That is why we combine clarity with an elegant, ‘beautiful’ design that catches the eye and makes you want to keep looking.
Information exists because people have questions. We collect those questions and take them as the starting point of our work. Often the answer turns out to be complex. We try to make that complexity visible and understandable rather than reducing it to a single simple statement.
An example: in the Alps, tourism and alpine farming depend on each other – the more guests there are, the more farms can make a living from their alpine pasture. We show this connection between nature and culture without passing judgement on it.
People should be able to hold our products in their hands and look at them. We make sure our prints are easy to read, the materials feel good, and our products are made in Europe.
And for all the precision, design is allowed to be fun.
We come from Germany, an Alpine country without a single three-thousand-metre peak, from a city whose highest ‘mountain’ is 116 metres high. So we are allowed the odd joke.
She is a graphic designer. She grew up in Latvia and studied fine art and communication design in Hamburg. Afterwards, she worked for agencies such as TLGG, Blast Radius, and Kolle Rebbe, and supported clients like VW, Google, Gruner & Jahr, and Sennheiser.
is a journalist. After years as a television writer at NDR, he now co-manages the programme at funk. At Marmota Maps, he looks after ideas for new products as well as content, accounting and marketing.
