Here’s a question from Didier that’s a little outside the normal boundaries of this blog, but I think I’ve got a couple of ideas on the subject… Hi Cam, What is the best way to hang a map on a wall? I don’t really want to frame it, but I don’t think pins would be/look great. How do you hang maps on your walls? Thanks and your work is amazing. Transit Maps says: Thanks for […]
Submitted by Anthony, who says: Here’s my map of Off-Peak (weekdays, and nights) and Weekends Long Island Rail Road Service. This map shows service diagrammatically, de-emphasizing geography for clarity of branch services and transfers, introduces a grouping color coding system for branches, and improves legibility of the system. The LIRR current map lacks both routing and geographic info – there’s no sense of connecting roads and services and no sense of which branch’s trains stop at which station – failing at […]
A beautiful early map for this system, clearly showing how much of it was planned from the start. Apart from a few name changes (the proposed “Old Fold” station became Gateshead Stadium, for example), this is recognisably the same map that existed as far into the future as the year 2000, when the proposed extension to Sunderland made its appearance. The outlined route lines to show proposed/future extensions work wonderfully well, making an excellent contrast […]
Submitted by Halid Karpović, who says: It’s Halid again, who’s already submitted you the transit diagram of Sarajevo. This time, I’ve got something I’ve made myself. When I was on vacation in Denmark a while ago, I got a leaflet with timetables of the Danish InterCity lines, operated by DSB. Then, I took a pencil and four sheets of paper and drew a transit diagram with its help. Et voilà, this is the result! I’d be […]
While it’s true that I don’t really like the use of station labels that are angled – being very much in the Erik Spiekermann camp that believes horizontal labels aid comprehension and create a cleaner looking map – I do realise that there are times when their use is necessary. If you do use angled labels, then I strongly advise that you keep the number of angles used to the absolute minimum required – type […]
Designed by two students – Jaikishan and Snehal – at Mumbai’s Industrial Design Centre under the supervision of Associate Professor Mandar Rane. While it looks like quite a traditional transit map, there’s a few innovations and design choices (of which some work, and some don’t) that make it interesting to study. First off, this map is infinitely better than the official one, which is a bit of a mess however you look at it. Normally, I’m not a huge […]
Here’s a map that’s doing the social media rounds today – a subway map-style representation of Airbus A380 routes. All I can say is: meh. Remember when air travel was stylish and cool? Personally, I love airline route maps, with their arc-like routes branching out all across the globe: it helps keep a sense of wonder about the vast distances we travel, high above the earth. Instead, here we are: on the subway. Under the […]
Following on from last week’s tutorial, here’s how to use the Core Type Area to make your station labels align perfectly and consistently when you’re applying them to 45-degree angled route lines. If you use the edges of the Core Type Area when you’re aligning labels to horizontal and vertical route lines, then it should make perfect sense that you use the corners of it when you’re labelling angled stations. The first GIF shows the […]
Submitted by Bernie, who says: Hello Cameron, I saw your recent post regarding future Singapore MRT/LRT maps and thought I’d throw mine into the ring. The Singapore MRT has long been one of my fave metro systems around the world. I like the concept of destination numbers and station numbers – I believe it is one of the first, if not the first, to use this concept (do let me know if that’s not quite […]
A beautiful diagram indicating the patterns of homeward peak-hour travel via public transportation (at this time, mainly streetcar) in Toronto. By my rough count, the collection of yellow dots in the downtown area represents some 49,500 people. Of particular interest are the red-and-white hatched dots, which represent a point where passengers transfer from the privately-run Toronto Railway Company’s (TRC) streetcars to those of the city-owned Toronto Civic Railways. Due to a disagreement over the terms […]
