If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I’ve been working on this project for a while now, but I think the time has finally come to share the final product. (Click on the image to view it larger).
Prints of this map are available in my online store, starting at just $38 plus shipping for a 24″ wide by 32″ print. Click here to get one!
This map is an evolution of one I initially made as a quick throwaway project back in 2016, but lots of great feedback from many, many people has really helped it become much more complete and comprehensive. While my original map only featured the subway itself, this one includes PATH (and parts of New Jersey!), the Staten Island Railway (added after overwhelming popular support), the JFK AirTrain, the Roosevelt Island Tram and indications of easy connections (either directly adjacent stations or those within a 0.3 mile radius) to the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and NJ Transit.
While the map is faithful to the London Underground style, there have been some changes made for a few reasons. All the icons have been redrawn to better match their New York equivalents (check out the Roosevelt Island Tram icon!) and to avoid using any official Transport for London design assets in the map. The typeface is ITC Johnston Sans, a commercially available font for which I hold a license. All the colours have likewise been tweaked to be similar—but not identical—to those used on the Tube Map.
For legibility’s sake, I’ve used a thin white keyline to separate route lines of the same colour when they cross each other but don’t otherwise interact. This mainly happens with branches of the orange IND 6 Avenue line, as seen to the left. The official Tube Map uses keylines like this in a couple of places (but not very consistently), so I thought adapting it for this specific purpose would be fine. It certainly adds a bit of clarity to some potentially confusing areas of the map, as does the addition of a few strategically placed reassurance bullets that help a reader follow the lines from end to end.
More details of the map in the gallery below:
By popular request, prints of this map are available in my store starting at just $38 plus shipping for a 24″ x 32″ print. Because this is a vector file, I can print this one right up to a massive 44″ wide by 58.5″ deep. Go get yourself one!
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome. This one has been a lot of fun to work on and improve with the assistance of so many wonderful people—thanks again to all of you!
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Have you shown us how you do key-lines before? I know you can add an additional appearance to the stroke in illustrator, but you wouldn’t necessarily want it for the entire path. How do you do it for just a small section?
Cameron, your map is so far superior to the MTA’s, I don’t see why they don’t adopt it (and pay you) immediately. A few minor suggestions: You could/should include the rest of the PATH system with a minor tweak; you omitted “NJT” on the PATH Hoboken station; you omitted “Amtrak” at Penn Station. Although the MTA’s method of indicating express service is thoroughly horrific, (viz the B and D Lines in The Bronx), perhaps you could apply the method you used for the 5 Line to Nereid Avenue to other lines. But, all in all, a master work!
Another suggestion that might make a nice addition might be access information for LaGuardia Airport.
How did you make this? It’s so rediculosly cool, I might buy one myself.
All my maps are designed in Adobe Illustrator… plus over 20 years of graphic design expertise!
I think you could show express service by using the interchange route bullet, especially with 2 different colored lines, like the A/B/C/D between 145 and 59 St and the B/Q to Coney Island