Basemapkit is a new open-source collection of basemap styles to be used with Maplibre GL JS and data from the Protomaps OSM pmtiles builds. At the time of writing, Basemapkit supports 41 languages. For now, Basemapkit contains one base style called “avenue”. From the creator, Jonathan Lurie:
The main idea behind avenue is to be a one-size-fits-all, a basemap that one can pull whenever they need a basemap, and it’s magically going to work just fine. Such a magically versatile basemap is probably not going to ever exist, but that’s my attempt.
And:
One of the key design rules for avenue is that there are no outrageously fake colors. Highways are not yellow, and the most rule-bending symbology is cycling lanes to be dashed+green and tunnels/bridges to be white.
Most recently, Jonathan has added relief shading to Basemapkit. Basemapkit offers to options: Mapterhorn (previously covered here) and Mapzen.
Through color manipulation, the avenue base style is branched out into currently 9 different presets that come with Basemapkit. Users can also modify avenue for their individual use case themselves.
There is a GitHub repository as well as two articles by Jonathan detailling the design and the technical background: “Basemapkit: web basemaps for the people” and “Basemapkit: Let’s explore the mountains!”.