Submitted by sailsandrails, who says:

I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while: what is your opinion of the original styling of Helsinki’s Metro map?

(Photo taken from this site, unfortunately I couldn’t find a better one). After several revisions, the current version looks like this, which is more international in style.

Personally, I think the original is surprisingly readable while being pleasantly unique in style, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Transit Maps says:

I definitely agree – the original map (dating from 1982, the year the Helsinki Metro opened) is quite charming. Yes, the map is simple – a single line with just nine stations – but it turns that simplicity into a virtue and creates something quite elegant and stylish. The unusual station markers – just a gap between line segments – are very effective and help form a grid for the informational text both above and below the line. The bus numbers beneath the line are beautifully typeset, with numbers right-aligned, but with the letter suffixes offset to the right for easy reference: I love this sort of attention to detail!

What I like most of all is that the designers have totally resisted trying to make their little system look more impressive by adding extraneous detail: something that other single line transit systems have been guilty of over the years. If there’s one tiny flaw, it’s that the last station name to the right is cut off by the frame around the map. The stylish minimalist wayfinding signage above the map adds to the appeal as well.

The modern map is very competent, but it just doesn’t have the same sort of confident verve that the original map has. Rather, it uses a lot of standard transit map design elements – circles for stations, slightly rounded curves, a friendly sans serif typeface – to create something that feels comfortable and blandly familiar. The station labels set at a 90-degree angle are also a little harder to read than the original 45-degree angled type.

An interesting progression for sure! Four stars for the old map, 3 for the new.