Stephan M. Van Dam, AIGA, SEGD
President, Principal & Creative Dictator

CAREER PROFILE

Stephan Van Dam is an award-winning cartographer, graphic designer, and information architect. He is the president, principal and creative director of New York–based VanDam, Inc. The universal power of maps has been his guiding passion for the last 20 years, and fuels his desire to tell stories and construct new realities through maps in all media.

Mr. Van Dam holds several patents in the field of paper engineering and origami map folding. His work has been honored by the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA), the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the editors of ID Magazine and has been featured on national television.

Mr. Van Dam is also publisher of his own series of maps and atlases. In this function he has directed, and overseen the production of city maps and guides for over 85 cities around the world.

As a designer and producer Mr. Van Dam created the COSMOS UNFOLDS, a series of EcoGuides to the universe, rainforest, desert, ocean, the Moon and Mars in 1989 for Putnam Publishing, and mapped the heavens for the Walt Disney Company (1993). He has designed atlases for AAA, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and Hagstrom, created map identities for federal, state and local governments including the NYEDC, LACVB, NYCVB, and produced a series of US National Park maps for the Grand Canyon National History Association.

He also conceptualized and produced a series of Culture Guides for the UN, which has become the de-facto map standard for Pfizer Pharmaceutical’s convention business. Mr. Van Dam designed and produced the first ever 3-D magazine cover for Marvel Entertainment and oversaw production of its 1.5 million copy run.

Furthermore, he developed and produced the format and cartographic design for Let’s Go Map Guides for St. Martin’s Press which have set the standard for travel publishing over the last eight years with sales exceeding 4.5 million copies.

Stephan also helped raise the bar for public way-finding and signage systems in Downtown Manhattan with Heritage Trails. By mapping the history of Downtown in 3-D he not only designed a series of intriguing guidemaps, and public displaymaps for 42 site markers in key locations, but also created the institutional ID for Heritage Trails. This series of maps continues to be the guiding way-finding system Downtown and has been honored by the AIGA.

To expand cultural tourism in NYC he is currently working with various state and city agencies under the aegis of NYEDC to map the history of religious freedom in Flushing, Queens.

Following the events of September 11th, the Regional Plan Assoc. and the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown retained Stephan to create a film articulating a new vision for the future of transportation in New York and its region.

In February of 2002 Mr. Van Dam presented his work at the TED (Technology/Entertainment/Design) Conference in Monterrey, CA. Other presenters included Yo-Yo Ma, Frank Gehry, David Rockwell, Christy Hefner, Deepak Chopra, Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones.

In July of 2002 he was asked by the New York Times to join a group of architects and planners including Richard Meier, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, and Charles Gwathmey to explore alternative urban proposals in the rebuilding process of Downtown Manhattan.

The Metroplitan Transportation Authority (MTA) asked Stephan in the fall of 2003 to consult on ways to make MTA’S The Map more understandable to wide audiences.

Since 2004 Mr. Van Dam has been leading the Company’s effort to advance the creation of the geoweb thorough map4D, the first 4–dimensional, interactive mapping architecture which makes people part of the map in cartographic space. These rich-media “locative media” promise to revolutionize travel planning, way-finding, real estate transactions and local search. VanDam is getting ready to release map4D in late 2009 for use on mobile and gaming devices as well as iPhones.