All posts filed under: Tutorials

Tutorial: Station Labels Using the “Core Type Area” – Part 2: 45-Degree Angled Route Lines

November 27, 2013
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Following on from last week’s tutorial, here’s how to use the Core Type Area to make your station labels align perfectly and consistently when you’re applying them to 45-degree angled route lines. If you use the edges of the Core Type Area when you’re aligning labels to horizontal and vertical route lines, then it should make perfect sense that you use the corners of it when you’re labelling angled stations. The first GIF shows the […]

Tutorial: Station Labels Using the “Core Type Area” – Part 1: Horizontal and Vertical Route Lines

November 20, 2013
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A lot of transit maps that I’ve seen and reviewed on this blog are badly let down by their labelling. Sometimes it seems that the labels have been applied without much forethought or planning, or just slapped on at the end and placed wherever they will fit. But labels are arguably one of the most important parts of a transit map: it should always be immediately apparent which station marker a label belongs to, and […]

Tutorial: More on Using Point Type in Illustrator (with Owen Lett)

November 13, 2013
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Here’s a fantastic follow-up post from Owen Lett (the man who brought you this neat fantasy transit map of Victoria, BC) in response to yesterday’s tutorial about point type in Illustrator. There’s a lot to like about this approach, especially the integrated type point and station marker (two overlaid points define both elements and both can be placed simultaneously) and the use of paragraph styles (an often-overlooked feature in Adobe Illustrator) gives the ability to […]

Tutorial: Working with Point Type Labels in Adobe Illustrator

November 13, 2013
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Here’s a small but important tip when it comes to working with station labels in Adobe Illustrator. Most of the time, it’s easier to use what Illustrator calls point type when setting labels – that is, you click once with the Type Tool and then type your text, rather than dragging out a text frame with the tool. It looks neater in wireframe view and is generally less cumbersome to work with. However, you need […]

Tutorial: Applying a Stroke Behind Type in Adobe Illustrator

November 5, 2013
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Let me preface this tutorial by saying that — without a shadow of a doubt — this is my number one most favourite, time-saving, map-making Adobe Illustrator trick ever. When making transit maps, it’s preferable — for both aesthetics and readability — to not have any labels overlay a route line or other elements. However, sometimes it’s simply unavoidable, as in the detail of my Boston MBTA map redesign at the top of the image above […]

Tutorial: Multiple Strokes on One Path in Adobe Illustrator

October 29, 2013
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This little tip is thanks to RG, who left a comment on the site asking: “Can you comment on how you make the 2pt of white space between lines show when you have lines cross over each other?” On most transit maps, route lines will cross over each other at various points. Most of the time, an interchange station exists at that point and the symbol for that covers up the lines as they cross. […]

Tutorial: Working with 45-Degree Curves in Adobe Illustrator

October 27, 2013
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I got an request from an anon last week which asked:  “Hey! Could you do a video tutorial on how to bypass Illustrator’s annoying round corners effect in case of 45 degrees? It would be a lifesaver!” Now, while you’re not going to get a video tut out of me – I don’t have the resources, time or know-how to produce one of those – I can and will share my battle-tested personal approach to […]

Project: My Reworking of the New Sydney Trains Map

September 27, 2013
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Okay, I couldn’t help myself: I just had to redraw this thing to illustrate all the points I talked about earlier – correcting the obvious errors I discovered in my technical review, and also addressing the general thoughts of my initial post. So here it is: not a redesign, but a reworking of the design concept while working within the established principles of the official map. If you’re just starting out with designing transit maps, […]

Technical Review: New Sydney Trains Network Map

September 24, 2013
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It seems that the draft Sydney Trains map that I posted about the other day is the real thing: printed timetables featuring it have been seen and scanned. So, I started looking at it again in order to write a proper review, when I started to notice a lot of little technical things that – as a designer – I found jarring and inconsistent. I opened the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator and began to […]

Transit Map Typefaces: Other Styles (Part 4 of 4)

March 9, 2013
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To be honest, this is a pretty small category and I’m only including it for completeness’ sake. Included in this category are san serif fonts that don’t fall into any of the three major categories, veering more towards the decorative or ornamental. Examples of this include the Madrid Metro’s severe, squared off typeface (that matches the aesthetics of the map almost perfectly), and the similar, but less successful, square font that was once used in […]