Having just complained about how depressingly average the new official Denver RTD rail map is (June 2015, 1.5 stars), it’s rather wonderful to see an unofficial map that raises the bar as much as this one by Theo Ditsek.
Unlike the real map, this one has a pleasingly compact shape, compressing the outer reaches of the map while expanding the central part. It’s a classic diagrammatic transit map device, but it’s employed particularly well here, with very little “dead space” throughout the map.
There’s some nicely understated mode differentiation as well: while all the route lines share the same stroke width, light rail uses black station dots and commuter rail uses white dots. The line letter designations also get different treatments – solid colour with white letters for light rail, keylined white boxes with coloured letters for commuter rail. It works well, although the similar circled “P” symbol for parking could perhaps be initially confused as a line designation. Perhaps this is one time where a car pictogram could be more effective at immediate communication of an idea.
The absolute best part of this map, however, is the treatment of Union Station: a “so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it!” diamond of station symbols that allows all the route lines to head off in the required direction with a minimum of fuss. It’s a lovely little visual device that works incredibly well; a fantastic solution to a very difficult design problem (believe me, I’ve toyed with a few Denver map redesigns (see here, for example) and Union Station is definitely one of the hardest parts to represent well).
A few minor problems… some of the line colours used seem unnecessarily similar to each other. While part of this problem is the Denver RTD’s choice of colour designations, I think Theo could have made some better choices to differentiate lines from each other. In particular, the “G” line should be far more “gold” than “orange”, especially as it’s right next to the traditionally orange “C” line at Union Station. My old-school CMYK breakdown for “gold” (taught to me by a senior designer at my very first job way back in 1993) has always been C0 M30 Y80 K20, which I think would work well here. I also prefer RTD’s lime green for the “R” line to Theo’s apple green.
I also think that the station labels are sometimes just a little too close to the route lines, with descenders actually hitting them on occasion.
Some people might also say that the decision not to show fare zones allows Theo a lot more design freedom than the official map allows, but I think it’s a fair trade here: the loss of a secondary or even tertiary piece of information for a much clearer, more legible map. I’ll take that!
Our rating: I may or may not have squealed like an excited child when I first saw this map. Great stuff! Four stars.
Source: Theo Ditsek’s website