Author: Cameron Booth

Tutorial: More on Using Point Type in Illustrator (with Owen Lett)

November 13, 2013
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Here’s a fantastic follow-up post from Owen Lett (the man who brought you this neat fantasy transit map of Victoria, BC) in response to yesterday’s tutorial about point type in Illustrator. There’s a lot to like about this approach, especially the integrated type point and station marker (two overlaid points define both elements and both can be placed simultaneously) and the use of paragraph styles (an often-overlooked feature in Adobe Illustrator) gives the ability to […]

Tutorial: Working with Point Type Labels in Adobe Illustrator

November 13, 2013
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Here’s a small but important tip when it comes to working with station labels in Adobe Illustrator. Most of the time, it’s easier to use what Illustrator calls point type when setting labels – that is, you click once with the Type Tool and then type your text, rather than dragging out a text frame with the tool. It looks neater in wireframe view and is generally less cumbersome to work with. However, you need […]

Unofficial Maps: Other Salt Lake City Rail Transit Maps

November 11, 2013
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A selection of alternate maps for Salt Lake City that I’ve received as submissions or that I’ve found on the Internet. The first two maps – by thatlattesipper and scsj, respectively – were sent to me in the aftermath of Friday’s review of the UTA’s latest absymal effort, and must therefore have only had a few hours of work put into them. Scsj’s map was actually produced by an online transit map generator in less […]

Historical Map: Interactive Moscow Metro Map, c. 1968

November 11, 2013
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Sent in by long-time Transit Maps reader and contributor, @dars_dm, here’s a great old photo of an interactive map kiosk in the Moscow Metro. Push a button, and your route lights up! Apparently, these displays were common at many Metro stations through the early 1970s. Highly reminiscent of the Paris Metro’s plan indicateur lumineux d’itinéraires (or PILI), an example of which I featured previously. Source: PastVu website via @dars_dm

Official Map: Salt Lake City Rail Transit for Opening of New “S Line”

November 8, 2013
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Submitted by the eagle-eyed Garrett Smith, who says: I must say I am not overly impressed with UTA’s revision of their rail map—which will begin to be posted in trains once UTA’s first streetcar, the S Line, opens. Yes, it certainly is better than before. Removing addresses from the map did wonders for improving legibility. But that’s about it. Call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t the lines below the station names roughly correspond to the […]

Unofficial Map: Beijing Subway by Cameron Hughes

November 8, 2013
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Submitted by Cameron, who says: Hi Cameron, fellow Cameron here! I recently redesigned the Beijing Subway map for an Information Design class (as well as doing a little bit of rebranding and signage/wayfinding design). It’s still a work in progress so I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! You can view the entire project as well as a full-size PDF here. Transit Maps says: This looks like an interesting (and somewhat daunting) project! I […]

Official Map: “BUZ” Frequent Service Bus Network, Brisbane, Australia

November 6, 2013
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“BUZ” apparently stands for “Bus Upgrade Zone”, a somewhat convoluted way to refer to frequent service routes – every 10 minutes in peak periods and every 15 minutes at other times. That Brisbane has 20 such frequent service routes is actually pretty impressive, but the map itself is not. What a horrible, twisted, messy, scraggly attempt at a network map this is. Completely diagrammatic in some parts, and overly precise in others: what is with […]

Historical Map: The Burlington Route (Chicago to San Francisco), 1879

November 6, 2013
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Here’s a beautiful map from the glory days of American railroading, showing the route from Chicago to San Francisco via Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. Amtrak’s modern-day California Zephyr still calls at many of the same locations between Chicago and Omaha to the east and from Elko to Oakland in the west, but takes a different route through the middle, using Colorado instead of Wyoming. Although presented as one continuous route, the […]

Tutorial: Applying a Stroke Behind Type in Adobe Illustrator

November 5, 2013
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Let me preface this tutorial by saying that — without a shadow of a doubt — this is my number one most favourite, time-saving, map-making Adobe Illustrator trick ever. When making transit maps, it’s preferable — for both aesthetics and readability — to not have any labels overlay a route line or other elements. However, sometimes it’s simply unavoidable, as in the detail of my Boston MBTA map redesign at the top of the image above […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: Sydney Trains Aerial Image

November 4, 2013
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Submitted by thatlattesipper. Sydney Trains routes (complete with new “T-line” branding) for the north and west of the city overlaid on a Google Earth image. If nothing else, this map reminds us of how staggeringly huge Greater Sydney really is. It’s 20 kilometres in a straight line from the dot representing Central Station at the lower left to Hornsby (just off the right of the map), and over 30km from Central to Prospect Reservoir, the […]