Lovely set of wayfinding strip maps from Berlin. The current station, Alexanderplatz, is subtly highlighted with a grey box behind its name. I really like the way that station names are all to the right of each line, with connections shown to the left – an excellent and consistent division of information to make wayfinding easier. Source: manganite/Flickr
Peter Dunn from Stonebrown Design sent this map to me this morning for my thoughts, and it’s definitely worth looking at. You may recall that Peter is also responsible for this neat “subway map” of the Appalachian Trail, previously featured on Transit Maps. Visually, this map reminds me of this unofficial map of Amsterdam’s Metro – mainly because of the unusual radial design and the treatment of bodies of water. However, this map arguably puts […]
Detail of a Line A strip map in Prague. Source: daveglanz/Flickr
Thanks to Chris Helenius for bringing this amazing map by Richard Saul Wurman (founder of the TED Conference amongst other things) to my attention. In the course of research for this post, I also discovered that Mr. Wurman was responsible for these beautiful maps of Philadelphia from the book Man-Made Philadelphia: still the most-visited post on Transit Maps by far. But onto the map itself. Firstly, this is not a map of the Tokyo subway, as […]
From the back of a Gregory’s Street Directory by the look of things, and very much in their house style. I’m not sure this map is actually helping things that much: Sydney’s labyrinthine network of streets is partially to blame, but the flow of arrows and lines could also be much clearer. The strange decision to make the background black for the second half of the suburb list (to the right of the map) has […]
One of a series of nifty advertisements for the Metro system in Valencia, Spain. This one highlights the system’s connections to the airport (via Lines 3 and 5); I’ve also seen other ones that form the shape of a shopping bag (to showcase the connections to the shopping districts of the city), and a bicycle (to indicate that bicycles can be taken on the system). These ads all tie into a previous iteration of the […]
Not half bad, either. Source: justgrimes/Flickr
Here’s a question from an anonymous follower, who asks: “Is it good or bad to depict lines under construction on subway maps?” In my opinion, if the line is actually under construction, then it’s definitely a good thing to show it. It gets users acquainted with the new line before it opens and generates interest. How you show it is up to you – dashed lines are the usual way, although advances in printing mean […]
Here’s a different type of transit map altogether… if one could really call it a “map” at all. Showing commuter rail services out of Finland’s capital, Helsinki, this matrix instead focuses on showing stopping patterns on the four colour-coded commuter lines. Each pattern is clearly denoted with a letter that corresponds to a train – not unlike the local/express services on the New York subway – making finding the correct train to catch easy and […]
Here’s another amazing historical planning map, this time from Boston in 1945. Visually, it looks quite similar to this map, but shows an amazing array of planned extensions to the existing system. Some of them were built soon after this map was drawn up:the Revere (Blue Line) extension to Wonderland was essentially complete by 1952, although this map shows the line heading even further north. Others took much, much longer: the (Red Line) to Quincy […]
