Submitted by Tom, who says:

Hi Cameron, first I would like to mention that I greatly appreciate your work and have learned lots about transit maps from your blog alone. It was also this blog that inspired me to try to design my own maps. It’s a great joy to me now. Here, I would like to share with you my take on the network in Valencia which, I thought, would be a fun challenge. For the line and station design, I’ve chosen a similar style to one that I used in my Bay Area diagram. My goal was to make the Valencia map more aesthetically pleasing, simplify the geometry, and come up with a different idea for the zone boundaries. I’d love to hear your opinion and things you think can be improved. Looking forward to it!

Transit Maps says:

Apart from one thing (which I’ll get to later), I absolutely adore this diagram, Tom. First off, I love the typeface used (Cera Pro), which has a wonderful legibility to it as well as having one of the best sans serif capital Q’s I have ever seen – just lovely. The open feeling that Cera Pro creates continues throughout the rest of the diagram, which feels clean and spacious throughout – nothing is crammed up tight to anything else, which is so nice to see.

Unlike the official diagram [review from June 2022 here – Cam] which doesn’t bother with any sort of mode differentiation (it’s all just “Metrovalencia”), Tom’s diagram differentiates between the more suburban rail lines and the urban tram lines in two subtle but very effective ways. The rail lines are cased with a darker shade of their line colour and use a much larger radius when they change direction compared to the tram lines. These larger curves are another part of what makes this diagram so elegant, but the tram lines need tighter radiuses, especially for the loop Line 4 makes at its eastern end – Tom’s solution accommodates both needs.

Other nice design touches: subtle drop shadows throughout lift the station markers up above the route lines; the texture on the sea is delightful; and the zone backgrounds are lovely and subtle – a far cry from the “in your face” colours used on the official map. They may actually be just a tad too subtle, but I appreciate the different approach. The diagram’s legend is clean, easy to understand and is integrated nicely into the overall design of the piece, instead of being an afterthought.

So what’s the one thing I don’t like? The exaggerated angle that the urban area of the diagram takes. In reality, Valencia’s “north” is tilted about 20 degrees clockwise from true north, and the maritime district isn’t that much further south than the historic core of the city. So seeing everything rotated on a huge 45-degree angle, with the maritime district pushed so far south (and the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències pushed even further out of place), just looks jarringly wrong. The distinctive “green belt” of the old Turia River parkland mitigates this somewhat, but it still looks strange to my eyes.

Our final word: A stylish, elegant diagram with a lot of modern design touches that perhaps strays just a little too far from being grounded by the real world layout of the city it represents. It’s still pretty darn awesome.