Check out this eye-poppingly bright bus map from Spokane, Washington, brought to my attention by Zachary Ziegler of the Transit 509 blog. Produced by a local design firm, this seems to be the first attempt at any sort of bus map in Spokane. It’s notable for the interesting way that the route lines overprint each other when they cross, which creates an interesting sort of plaid pattern where many routes meet downtown. Adorable little colour-coded buses can be seen traversing the routes, and there are some simple drawings of notable landmarks scattered around the map as well. I’d hazard a guess that the route lines were actually created with some kind of adhesive film cut to shape: you can see the rough joins where some routes change direction. This would have been much quicker than drawing all the route lines by hand (we’re still quite a few years before computers in design here).

Our rating: A lovely little bit of 1980s ephemera, but looking fairly dated and clumsy by today’s standards. Lots of clip art (love the girl in the bikini repeated for every swimming pool in town!) and really, really bright colours. Two-and-a-half stars.

Compare to the current Spokane bus map by CHK America (February 2012, 4 stars).

Source: Transit509 website