Photo: Timothy Nesmith
Oliver Uberti is a former senior design editor for National Geographic and the co-author of four acclaimed books of maps and graphics. His latest, Atlas of Finance, which The Wall Street Journal called “a master class in the use of design as exposition,” won two U.S. PROSE Awards, including Best Single Volume. This spring, the Royal Geographical Society honored Oliver with its Geographical Engagement Award for his “maps and data visualizations that not only inform but also inspire us to think about the world differently and, crucially, to care about it.”
For pushing the boundaries of what maps can do, Oliver and longtime collaborator James Cheshire were awarded the North American Cartographic Information Society’s Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography in 2017. Their first three books together, starting with London: The Information Capital, each won the British Cartographic Society Award for cartographic excellence. Their second book, Where the Animals Go, received the 2022 Wenjin Book Award from the National Library of China, and their third, Atlas of the Invisible, won the 2021 Globe Book Award from the American Association of Geographers and earned the duo honorary fellowships in the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Oliver is also the designer and co-editor of Notes from a Public Typewriter, a 2019 Michigan Notable Book created in collaboration with Literati Bookstore.
When not writing books, Oliver creates cover illustrations for the world’s top academic journals and designs maps and infographics for clients ranging from scientists and small businesses to the National Park Service and World Bank. At his studio in Los Angeles, he takes on clients whose causes he believes in. He gets to know clients closely and comes to view their visions as if they were his own. Then he asks his favorite question: “What if we?”
SELECT TALKS
TEDxUofM
TEDxNASA
Royal Geographical Society
Explorers Club
Smithsonian
Google
Ford Motor Company
Stamen Design Podcast
How To: Academy
Americans for the Arts
Linda Hall Library
NACIS
Guild of Natural Science Illustrators
Savannah College of Art & Design
Central Michigan University