The inspiration for this tattoo (which looks real) is really quite obvious when you know what you’re looking for. This is H.C. Beck’s first unsolicited attempt at a Paris Metro diagram from around 1939, and has been reproduced quite faithfully (although without the station names). Source: zachhaschanged/Instagram
Submitted by Peter Marshall, who says: I’m currently trying to design a clearer diagrammatic representation of the maddening tangle of railway lines and services in the South London area. Just doing my initial research into historical versions online, I turned up this interesting map. It appears to have been published in 1969 by British Rail, for what purpose, I am not absolutely certain. It seems far too sparse in detail to be a map intended […]
Submitted by our resident repository of Chicago transit map knowledge, Dennis McClendon, who says: This map of Chicago’s rapid transit network originated in the 1970s (this one is from June 1983), and this style was used until routes received color names in 1993. Happily, by that time digital printing in fiberglass-embedded signs made full-color maps easier to place in graffiti-prone environments. These maps were silk-screened onto [blue] color blanks, and every color of ink added […]
One of 26 panels on the walls of the platforms of this U-Bahn station that show the history of the subway before the First World War. Source: bentchristensen14/Flickr
Submitted by Josh Brandt, who says: I used to work at a university, and one day while poking through some dumpsters I found a big hardbound book full of architectural drawings and tables and things, a final report on developing a mass transit system for Jakarta. I don’t know if that sort of thing interests you, but here are some pictures of pages from it. They planned for 2 lines, NS and EW, and mapped […]
Submitted by creatures-alive. A striking transit network map from Soviet Vilnius in the late 1960s. The stark, angular route lines are softened a bit by the wide lazy curves of the city’s rivers, but this is still pretty severe, minimalist, almost abstract design. Also of note is the map’s title and legend, set in five different languages – Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, German and English. Source: Vilniaus Katalogas website
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 […]
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
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 […]
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 […]
