Tim Meko

I tell the world’s most important stories with maps, data visualization, and design—and I lead teams who do the same.

Tim Meko

I tell the world's most important stories with maps, data visualization, and design—and I lead teams who do the same.

Experiments with mapping in Blender

Dynamic scenes that establish place and use animation to explain.

Visualizing American democracy

Innovative visualizations for two landmark elections, including the viral 'sand map' that showed every vote as individual grains and wind-pattern maps revealing political currents across America.

Visualizing the COVID pandemic

Two of the pandemic's most powerful visual stories - from the stark memorial marking 100,000 deaths to comprehensive year-in-review mapping that helped readers understand the pandemic's scope.

Mapping America's natural disaster risks

A visual investigation into America's weather disasters, exploring how every part of the country faces unique risks.

North Korea's missile ambitions, mapped

Led the rapid-response visual journalism for this breaking news analysis, transforming complex missile trajectory data into clear, impactful maps that explained global security implications.

Anatomy of America's infrastructure

A deep dive into America's infrastructure, creating six distinct map perspectives that made complex infrastructure data accessible to millions of readers.

Talks and articles

Fast, flexible pipeline for 3D globe maps

Article June 2025

Every vote, visualized as a grain of sand

Article November 2024

How political winds changed the U.S.

Talk October 2021

Screenshot for the Win

Talk October 2019

North is a societal construct: when to break the rules with your map

Talk October 2018

Stories I shaped

Love spicy food? Hate it? Watch a hot wing’s trip through your body.

You’re probably recycling wrong. This quiz will help you sort it out.

What remains of Bears Ears

Borderline: Navigating the invisible boundary and physical barriers that define the U.S.-Mexico border

More Work

Here's how Africa wants to redraw the world map

How Francis, the second-oldest pope in modern history, compared with others

Where to view cherry blossoms in the D.C. area, mapped

No clock change? See how early or late you would be in the dark.

How Trump built his victory, vote by vote

Where floods from Hurricane Helene are ravaging the North Carolina mountains

How Tim Walz performed in his most recent election

Mapping 2024's cicada double-whammy

Where the Boeing 737 Max 9 flies

Explore the evolution of beer, from Stone Age sludge to craft brews

Where so many Republicans voted 'No' on Issue 1 in Ohio

Small towns don't vote like other rural areas

Ocean temperatures are off the charts. Here's where they're highest.

Only 19 U.S. theaters will show 'Oppenheimer' in 70mm Imax. It's epic.

From snowy West to snow-starved East, a map of winter winners and losers

Here's how the Seoul Halloween crush happened

What it looks like as drought strangles the mighty Mississippi

Mapping this summer's extreme divide in rain and drought

Young men, guns and the prefrontal cortex

Visualizing the omicron wave striking and rolling across the country

Satellite imagery shows the scale of the traffic congestion at the ports of Los Angeles

Satellite images show St. Vincent blanketed with volcanic ash as eruptions continue

A year of the pandemic: Sorrow, stamina, defiance, despair

Stimulus payments will cover seven months of rent for some, less than one for others

Ahead of the inauguration, much of D.C. closed off as never before

The political winds in the U.S. are swirling

How much is 250,000 deaths? Enough to empty wide swaths of the country.

Is it too close to the election to confirm a Supreme Court nominee?

Here's how California's worst-ever wildfire siege occurred

In these states, pandemic crisis response includes attempts to stop abortion

How a surge of coronavirus patients could stretch hospital resources in your area

Maps show where coronavirus started and why officials are so worried

Taal volcano's crater lake is nearly empty

A timeline of the escalation in the Middle East

ISIS at the crossroads

Where Christmas trees come from

Dipping low: Washington's historical winter temperatures

North Carolina has a new congressional map for 2020

Who's who in the whistleblower complaint

Satellite images show the destruction of Dorian in the Bahamas

We're at the peak of the global fire season

Why might Trump want to buy Greenland? Take a visual tour.

The smelly seaweed that turned Mexican beaches into a rancid mess

How many pain pills went to your pharmacy?

After a biblical spring, this is the week that could break the Corn Belt

The widening gap in abortion laws in this country

Mapping America's wicked weather and deadly disasters

Before and after: Iconic Notre Dame Cathedral scorched by blaze

A snapshot of where migrants go after release into the United States

Satellite images capture D.C.'s cherry blossoms at peak bloom

Satellite images show the devastating floods in the Midwest

Where the plane model that crashed in Ethiopia flies

The trouble with Kashmir

Where the new law permits - and prevents - border barriers

The Rio Grande is where new barriers will soon be erected along the southern border

Some of the coldest air in the world is decending on the Midwest

The Camp Fire's damage goes beyond what satellites can show

2018 House election results: Virginia and Maryland

How Ted Cruz held off Beto O'Rourke in Texas

Summer rainfall: opposite extremes split the nation

Why North Carolina's House Districts may be redrawn

360-degree drone images show the devastation of the Carr Fire

California took a radical step to fix gerrymandering. Did it work?

Five reasons the crisis in Yemen matters

A net result?

This map shows every inch of snow that fell on the lower 48 this year

Islamic State fighters returning home

Mapping the perfect U.S. winter Olympic city

Before and after photos of the mudslides in Montecito

What made North Korea's weapons programs so much scarier in 2017

Areas cut out of Utah monuments could reopen to mining and drilling

Mapping the DMZ

The rise and fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Maria's deluge on Puerto Rico

The 'ethnic cleansing' of the Rohingya

Latest North Korea missile launch suggests Guam is within reach

Before-and-after Hurricane Irma

Travel the path of the solar eclipse

How Iraqi forces defeated the Islamic State

The race to save Florida's devastated coral reef from global warming

North Korea showed off a lot of missiles. What might be their targets?

How eliminating two EPA programs could affect large parts of America

This map explains the weather we had in 2016

Six maps that show the anatomy of America's vast infrastructure

How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states

Where polling underestimated Trump?s chances

We built these White Houses from plastic…and electoral votes

The uneasy mix of forces battling the Islamic State

Workday Workouts

Sizing up the Olympics

Test all you want, but dopers will still compete in Rio. What you need to know.

One woman's fight to save her land from a pipeline that tore a region apart

The new space race

Legendary? Lousy? How your team has fared in the NFL draft

Everything you need to know about appointing a Supreme Court justice

Poor, rural areas will be most affected by Walmart closing 154 stores

Mapping Inequality in NYC

Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality

Secrecy for Sale

27 Weeks: Long-term Unemployment in America

The Hustle

Mapping America's Rental Housing Crisis

Following the Donors Trust Money Trail

Cracking the Codes

Inside the Conclave

Transylvania University

Geology of Natural Gas Resources

The Carbon Cycle

Energy in Virginia

Lost amphibians

Oil and Natural Gas formation

Increasing door security

Science of the Curl

Snow acoustics

Backyard Barbecue History

Comfest

Feeling the sting

NCAA special section front

In the groove

Ardi

Flora

Lake testing

Rust happens

Huntington Park: An Insiders view

Ohio's hoops history

On the brink: Can Ohio's big cities be saved?

Test of Convictions

A snapshot of Ohio's cities

Boom with a view

Building a snow fort

Cave dwellers

Counting down to zero

Exploring the buckeye state

Hoop dreams

Inside a scrubber

NCAA 09 special section

Ohio's most dangerous bridges

Old bones

Stag moose

Trash rehashed

About & Contact

Tim Meko is a graphics editor and visual journalist with nearly 20 years of experience turning complex ideas into clear stories.

At The Washington Post he leads cross-disciplinary teams that create maps, data visualizations, and design for some of the newsroom's most impactful work. The Post was named the World's Best Digital Design in 2024 by the Society for News Design (SND) — one of the highest honors in the visual media industry — and the graphics team has contributed to multiple Pulitzer-winning packages, alongside honors from the Information Is Beautiful Awards and others.

Previously he led teams at the Urban Institute and worked at the National Energy Education Development Project and the Columbus Dispatch.