Submitted by Niklas, who says:

Hi! I’m a student currently living in Berlin. I’ve always been fascinated by maps and recently I started to design one of my own. I hope you would review it on the blog, and give me some pointers as to where it can improve.

I wanted to redesign Berlin’s Transit Map in a different style (or rather my own). The map shows all U-Bahn (Metro), S-Bahn (Urban Rail) and Regional Train lines in and around Berlin. The lines are simplified as much as possible, creating flowing lines throughout. S-Bahn routes are bundled together in order to reduce the number of lines going through the city center. The U-Bahn is emphasised by a thicker stroke. I’ve also shown some of the construction going on around Berlin Hauptbahnhof and the (eternally unfinished) new airport Berlin-Brandenburg. The S-Bahn Ring (Fare Zone A), the City Border (Zone B) as well as the edge of Zone C are all centered inside each other. I haven’t yet figured out how to show the numerous Regional Train routes clearly on the map, so they are listed in the key on the right hand side along with some basic information on service frequencies. So – what do you think?

Transit Maps says:

It seems like everyone is doing dark background transit maps these days! While this can make for a stylish map, it’s not without its pitfalls – the foremost of which is reduced contrast with a lot of route line colours. Here, Niklas’ purple U6 and dark blue U8 lines are too dark to stand out from the background effectively, and some of the other colours are rather dark as well. The thinner S-Bahn lines have to work pretty hard to be seen, as do the dark grey “Under Construction” routes.

The arrangement of the lines is quite pleasant, with a spacious, stylish feeling to the map. The zones are handled well graphically, although they could benefit from being labelled as such on the map itself. Referring to the legend for that information isn’t ideal.

The station blobs are different in a good way, sitting underneath the route lines and being separated from them by a black keyline. Interchange stations are indicated by a white disc, which do stand out nicely from the dark background (maximum contrast!).

However, there is a fatal flaw in the map in that the labelling is absolutely tiny. The PDF Niklas supplied to me is roughly 36″ wide by 24″ tall, which is makes for a decent sized poster. However, his station labels are set in 6-point Helvetica Neue, which is way too small even in the best of circumstances. Reversed out of black like this is even more problematic, as the type would almost certainly fill in when printed and basically be illegible. I’ve always worked with a minimum of 8-point text when reversing out of a dark background, and even then it needs to be a fairly robust sans serif typeface, perhaps tracked out a little more than usual. Definitely nothing at the “Light” weight of a typeface.

The final word: A stylish-looking map, with a neat arrangement of the many lines and a comprehensive legend, but with labels that are way too small to be legible. 6-point is smaller than the disclaimer text at the bottom of used car ads! By comparison, labels on my Boston Rapid Transit map are 18-point at the same 36″ x 24″ print size: three times as large. Attention also needs to be paid to colours used against the black background – some of the darker ones definitely need to be lightened up.