Author: Cameron Booth

Historical Map: “Blue Guides Short Guide to Paris” Paris Métro Map, 1951

January 9, 2014
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An excellent effort to portray the complexities of the Métro with just two colours. A  wide array of different dashed lines allows 15 lines (the 14 Métro lines plus the Ligne de Sceaux) to be differentiated relatively easily. As a guide for tourists, the map wisely concentrates on the central part of Paris, leaving the stations further out to be listed in neat little call out boxes. Source: 217lemurs/Tumblr Paris Metro map from the inside cover […]

Fantasy Future Map: Los Angeles County Light Rail System from the Movie “Her”

January 9, 2014
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I love it when I’m able to fulfill requests from readers. Here’s a note I got from an anonymous follower the other day: The new movie “Her” is set in a futuristic LA with a very un-LA-like amount of public transport use and at one point includes a shot off to the side of the frame of a map showing a much, much bigger LA Metro rail network. Would love to see that on this […]

Historical Map: Tokyo Metro Map on a Passnet Fare Card, 2005

January 8, 2014
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Certainly solves the problem of having to read a map over someone’s shoulder on a crowded train (or resorting to wearing one on your tie). Passnet was a magnetic-stripe fare card in use in the Kanto region from 2000 to 2008: it’s since been replaced by the contactless Pasmo card. Source: Rob Ketcherside/Flickr

Official Map: TILO Commuter Rail – Ticino, Switzerland and Lombardy, Italy, 2014

January 7, 2014
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The emergence of a unified Europe has led to a gradual but noticeable blurring of borders between countries in Europe, which now seem to often exist only on maps. With free and easy travel between the European countries that are bound by the Schengen Agreement, it’s not impossible for people to live in one country and work in another, especially when they live close to a border. This map shows transit services in such an […]

Tutorial: Aligning and Spacing Elements Using “Invisible” Artwork

January 7, 2014
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A pretty simple trick this week, but one that I use all the time. If you need elements to be aligned precisely to another object, and always an exact distance away from that object, simply use a rectangle with no fill and no stroke (an “invisible” object) to define the required alignment and spacing. It won’t be visible in your final artwork, but can be seen in Illustrator’s Outline view for precise adjustment as required. […]

Fantasy Map: “Burgertown” by Anthony Scerri

January 6, 2014
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A fun little project that turns the humble hamburger into the transit system of a thriving metropolis: Burgertown! As Anthony says on Twitter, this project “combines my love of hamburgers and NY’s MTA Subway map” – in a delicious way!  Three of the four lines list the types of ingredients that can be used: the “Leafy Green Line” has stops at “Arugula”, “Oak Leaf” and “Iceberg”, for example. However, the “Bread Line” confuses things a bit […]

Historical Map: Ghost Stations of the London Underground

January 3, 2014
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The Underground has been around so long, and its famous Diagram so ingrained in our heads, that we tend to think of it as an immutable object: always the same, never changing. That’s absolutely not so, as this fantastic reworking of the Tube Diagram shows. Shown here are the 40-plus “ghost stations” of the London Underground – stations that once existed as part of the “Tube”, but no longer do, for varying reasons. Some stations […]

Historical Map: New York City’s Pneumatic Tube Mail System

January 3, 2014
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Not a transit map in the usual sense of carrying passengers, this map instead depicts a network that conveyed mail at speeds of up to 35mph under the streets of New York from 1897 to 1953 (barring a small gap during World War I when it was shut down to conserve funds for the war effort). This map probably shows the system at its height pre-WWI, with over 27 miles of tube. Even then, the […]

Tutorial: Harnessing the Power of Illustrator’s “Symbols” Feature in Transit Map Design

December 31, 2013
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Imagine this scenario: you’ve been working for months on a complex transit map – lots of interchanges and routes – for a big-city transit agency and you’re presenting it to their management team for approval. They love it, except they’d like the circular interchange markers you’ve used to be square with rounded edges instead. And they’d like to see the revised version in an hour. If you’ve used standard Illustrator artwork for each of your […]

Fantasy Map: New York Subway Map in the Style of Washington DC’s Metro Map by Chris Whong

December 30, 2013
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Yes, it only shows Manhattan and The Bronx with small parts of Brooklyn and Queens, but this is still a pretty awesome mash-up. Aesthetically, it’s a dead ringer for the Washington, DC Metro map – big, fat route lines, the “double ring” interchange stations, green areas for parkland, etc. Nice work from Chris to mimic this style so closely! While the map looks great, it really also shows how unsuited the bold, simplistic approach taken […]