Author: Cameron Booth

Question: What’s a good way to display one-way routes on a map?

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Questions, Tutorials

The only correct answer to this is is to use an arrow that points in the direction of travel. However, there’s plenty of different ways to integrate that arrow into your artwork, as the examples above show: next to your route lines, within your route lines, or even as an integral part of your route line. A lot of it depends on the aesthetic vision of the map, or how much space is available. If […]

Submission – Unofficial Map: “Hyper Japan” Directory London Underground Map

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Unofficial Maps

Submitted by chiguire, who says: Found this London Tube map in the Hyper Japan directory magazine. Hyper Japan is some sort of convention about the country [of Japan, held in London – Cam], but I couldn’t stop staring at this map. It’s like a car wreck, it’s horrible but you just can’t stop looking 😛 Transit Maps says: This is a great example how you can use all the elements of a successful transit map […]

Historical Map: Chapel Hill Transit Bus Map, 1974

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Historical Maps

Celebrating their 40th year of service today – August 1, 2014. Here’s their original service map showing eight routes: four city buses (solid lines), two UNC Campus buses (long dashed lines) and two Park/Ride express services to the airport lot and the mall lot (short dashes). The use of the different dashes allow the different types of services to be shown effectively with a limited (and cheap to print!) two-colour palette. There’s also some very […]

Official Map: Transfort Bus Map, Fort Collins, Colorado, 2014

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Official Maps

Submitted by zmapper, who says: This is the official bus system map for Fort Collins, Colorado. Of interest is the new north-south MAX BRT route, shown in lime green.  What appears to be a straightforward, vanilla transit map has some substantial flaws. The map doesn’t note that the 30-series and 90-series routes only operate when the state university and public schools are in session, respectively, or that the Green and Gold routes only operate Friday […]

Historical Map: Pocket Diary with London Tube Map, 1948

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Historical Maps

A lovely little black and white version of the Tube map at the front of a 1948 year diary. Drawn by H.C. Beck (see his name at the bottom left), it shows the central area of London only and is based off the 1946 version of the full map. By 1949, interchanges were being drawn with a white connector line between adjacent circles, rather than the separate circles seen here. Source: hollandfamilyarchives/Flickr

Fantasy Map: Rail Transport in Westeros by Michael Tyznik

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Fantasy Maps

Not the first Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice of Fire transit map I’ve seen, but definitely the best designed. It was created by Michael Tyznik, who also made this great fantasy map of Columbus (May 2012, 4 stars). I do detect the influence of my TGV Routes of France map in this work – the general station symbology, the curved routes lines out of King’s Landing and the use of colour coding to define […]

Historical Map: Unpublished Proof of H.C. Beck’s London Underground Diagram, 1932

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Historical Maps

A printer’s proof of the first card folder (pocket) edition of Beck’s famous diagram, with edits and corrections marked in his own hand. Of note is the use of quite ugly and overpowering “blobs” instead of the now-ubiquitous “ticks” for station markers, and the fact that the map has been entirely hand-lettered by Beck, using what he called “Johnston-style” characters. He’s cheated quite a bit with his letterforms and spacing on some of the longer […]

Submission – Official Map: Copenhagen S-Tog Network, 2014

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Official Maps

Submitted by 1993matias, who says: Hi there! I am a big admirer of your reckless slaughter of bad maps – and the praise of the good ones. But, the map you got for the Copenhagen S-train network (reviewed way back in November 2011, 3 stars) is not the best you could have gotten. This one above is the official one at all stations in the area. It has that sleek feel as the other map, […]

Replica 1958 Transit Map at the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, Japan

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Historical Maps

 No seriously: a museum devoted to ramen (in all honesty, it actually sounds pretty awesome). This map is found on the main floor of the museum, where nine restaurants serve different styles of ramen from Japan and around the world in a faithfully recreated Japanese streetscape from 1958 – the year that instant ramen was invented. As to which transit system it represents, I can’t even begin to guess. The original post on Flickr posits […]