Author: Cameron Booth

Quick Project: Amtrak Timetable Redesign

April 15, 2015
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After complaining on Twitter about how I found information in Amtrak’s timetables difficult to decipher, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and do a quick little redesign to prove my point. The brief to myself: it had to contain all the same information, use the same typeface (Frutiger), and fit in the same space as the original. Everything else was fair game, including colours, as the timetables are printed in four-colour brochures. However, […]

Submission – Fantasy Map: Louisville, Kentucky Metrorail by Marc Gannon

April 15, 2015
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Fantasy Maps
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Not the first Louisville fantasy map that I’ve featured – see Peter Dovak’s map here (March 2013) – but this one takes quite a different approach. It’s certainly grander in scale than Peter’s modest two-line system. I will say that I adore the colour palette of this map: the muted background, river and parklands are lovely, and work nicely with the route line colours, which are also a little knocked back from the normal solid […]

Historical/Unofficial Map: SF Muni Frequency Map, 1982 by Dennis McClendon

April 15, 2015
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Historical Maps, Unofficial Maps
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Sent my way by Dennis, who says: Today’s offering is spurred by news of a new Muni map showing frequency of service. Here’s the one I created for personal amusement in 1982. As you can see, the technology was a bit more primitive: Rapidograph technical pens, a calligraphy pen, and crepe-paper tape on tracing paper.  The rest of the page (of a visitors guide I made for friends) was typewritten. Transit Maps says: Nice and simple – […]

Draft: NEW Amtrak Subway Map for 2015

April 12, 2015
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My Transit Maps
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At the end of April 2015, Amtrak's Hoosier State service between Chicago and Indianapolis is scheduled to be discontinued — the first complete loss of a service since I created my "Amtrak as Subway Map" way back in 2010. Over the years, I've been pretty vigilant to changes to the Amtrak network — adding and deleting stations as required, extending the Downeaster Line to Brunswick and the Northeast Regional to Norfolk — but a change of this magnitude gives me the chance to take a completely fresh look at this project and rework everything from scratch, instead of just tweaking the old diagram again. Let's face it – I've learned a lot of new skills and tricks in the intervening years!

Fantasy Map: Transit Map from 1998 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film “Dark City”

April 10, 2015
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Fantasy Maps, Popular Culture
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Sent my way by Brian Stokle on Twitter.  I have to say that “Dark City” isn’t a movie I’m familiar with, although it had a pretty good cast – Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Ian Richardson and William Hurt. Let’s see: dystopian future… things aren’t what they seem… memory loss… framed for a crime he didn’t commit… the movie certainly ticks all the “1990s sci-fi movie” boxes, that’s for sure. Needless to say, “Shell Beach” is […]

Advertisement: “Double Diamond” Beer Featuring the London Tube Map (c. late 1970s?)

April 8, 2015
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More proof of just how ingrained the Tube Map is in the English psyche is evident in this billboard advertisement for Double Diamond beer – inserted as the punchline in the long-running “Only here for the beer!” campaign.  The ad campaign itself is almost as much as part of England as the Tube Map; the tag line has entered into the vernacular, much like “Where’s the beef?” in the U.S., and “Not happy, Jan!” in […]

Photo: Subway Map with Construction Gophers

April 7, 2015
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Dating back to the construction of the Kaohsiung MRT back in 2005. The O5/R10 interchange is now the Formosa Boulevard station, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful metro stations in the world. I’m not even going to pretend that I understand what the colour-coded gophers are for, but they sure are cute! Source: ailb/Flickr – link no longer active

Historical Map: Rapid Transit Plan for the Metropolitan Seattle Area, 1970

April 4, 2015
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Historical Maps
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A look at another stalled attempt to get rapid transit up and running in Seattle, this time from 1970. A lot of the proposed alignments look very familiar, but they are often constrained by Seattle’s difficult geography. I see that they were thinking of running rapid transit over the I-90 floating bridge – quite the engineering feat even now, let alone over 40 years ago. Even now, it’ll be the first light rail track travelling […]

Photo: FC Barcelona “Subway Map” at the Barca Museum

April 3, 2015
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Welcome to FCB Island! Or something like that… I’d love to have listened in on the design brief for this project: Make it an island!  Yeah, an island that looks like our crest! With lots of subway lines going everywhere and converging at the stadium! But none of them will go to the airport! Ha ha! Hilarious! I know, make the subway lines spell out “FCB” in the middle!!! Great! And it’s gotta have ALL the […]

Submission – Video: 24 Hours of Public Transportation in Budapest, 2012

April 2, 2015
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Submitted by scnartup, who says: Similar stuff to the video of a day in the life of London’s Underground in Budapest. Metro line M4 is not shown since it opened in 2014 and the video was made in 2012. One dot represents one vehicle [as opposed to the London video, where 1 dot represents a single rider – CAM]. Legend: white dot: night bus blue dot: bus red dot: trolley bus yellow dot: tram bigger dots: metro […]