Author: Cameron Booth

Unofficial Map: London Underground Map Recreated Entirely in CSS

May 22, 2013
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Even though I’m mainly a print designer, I’ve done enough web design work to know how fiddly (yet also powerful) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be. That’s why I’m totally in awe of this incredibly accurate rendition of the Tube Map, created with nothing but code by John Galatini. Not one image file to be seen! Johnston Sans is recreated with a web font, while the symbols for accessibility, National Rail, ferries, the Emirates Airline, […]

Submission – Official Map: Chicago “L” Map, Dan Ryan Branch Closure, 2013

May 22, 2013
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Submitted by Ryan, who says: Chicago’s updated CTA map. The Red Line is closed for 5 months between Cermak/Chinatown and 95th so there are now shuttle buses shown along with Red rerouting along green. Green also has a new Rush Hour route around the loop. A new transfer is also shown between Red and Blue at Lake and Washington (although this transfer requires a person to leave the station and walk a couple blocks to […]

Official Map: H.C. Chambers & Son Bury St. Edmunds – Colchester Routes, England

May 21, 2013
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An attractive and stylish route map on the side of a handsome red double-decker bus. While the service from Bury to Colchester via Bures carries a single route number (753), you actually have to change buses in Sudbury, hence the “double dot” shown there. The timetable on the bus company’s website warns that because of congestion, connections between the two buses at Sudbury may not always be timely.  The second line shown from Sudbury to […]

Historical Map: Abandoned Bus Station, Pripyat, Ukraine

May 20, 2013
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A harrowing image from the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, built in the 1970s to house workers for the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear plant. Pripyat lies just a few scant kilometres from the plant, and was permanently evacuated within two days of the disaster in 1986.  Within the ruins of the city’s bus station is this surprisingly intact map of services offered within the local region. Pripyat is the fourth station from the top along the right […]

Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise: the Berlin Ringbahn Map

May 17, 2013
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That’s enough from Boston for a while… let’s head to Berlin to look at this odd little map.  It shows the S41 and S42 S-Bahn lines, which travel clockwise and counter-clockwise, respectively, along the Ringbahn, a 37km (23 mile) loop around Berlin. While the map is packed with information – interchanges with other S- and U-Bahn services, stations with transfers to Deutsche Bahn trains, and estimated travel times between major stations – it just feels […]

Unofficial Map: MBTA Map Contest Entry by Michael Kvrivishvili

May 17, 2013
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Here’s another entry for the MBTA’s map contest, sent to me by Michael Kvrivishvili, a graphic and interactive designer from Moscow. Michael has chosen to show all of the services on his map that the MBTA does on their map – subway, BRT, commuter rail, key bus routes and ferries. He pulls it off pretty well, too, although the convoluted network of bus routes is always going to look a little busy. Like Kerim, Michael’s map […]

Unofficial Map: Kerim Bayer’s MBTA Map Contest Entry

May 15, 2013
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While I’m personally not too keen on the MBTA’s map contest, I totally respect the rights of those who still wish to participate. As they’ve told me in conversation, kudos and recognition can be very strong reasons for less experienced or amateur designers to enter. A couple of those designers have sent their entries in to me to review and share with you – this one’s from Kerim Bayer, who also produced this rather striking map […]

Visualization: Topology versus Geography in Transit Maps

May 14, 2013
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Here’s a nice little animated diagram from Fathom Information Design that compares the two polar opposites of transit mapping using Boston’s MBTA rail network as an example. Click through to play around with it, and see the benefits and drawbacks of the two approaches. It’s also super fun to watch the map morph between the two styles. In real life, most transit maps fall somewhere between these two extremes: very few use such a strict […]

Historical Map: The City of Los Angeles Showing Railway Systems, 1906

May 13, 2013
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Here’s a great old map of Los Angeles showing the already-booming rail transit network that was found in Los Angeles in the early days of the 20th Century. Electric trolleys first ran in LA in 1877, but  the “Red Cars” of the Pacific Electric and the “Yellow Cars” of the narrow-gauge Los Angeles Railway had only appeared a mere five years before this map was produced. Their lines are represented on the map in appropriate […]