Historical Map: The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe “Disneyland” Map, 1956

November 22, 2013
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A simply gorgeous mid-1950s map of the AT&SF’s passenger routes, taken from a promotional brochure produced in conjunction with Disneyland, which is shown prominently to the right of the map.

The brochure was ostensibly an introduction to the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland, then only a year old. Understandably, the AT&SF – who had basically bankrolled construction of the 5/8th scale railroad – were keen to get some return in their investment. As a result, much of the brochure is actually given over to advertising their “new and modern” rail services.

The whole brochure opens out to display this fantastic map, where Texas and Oklahoma are represented by scratchily drawn cattle,  oil derricks and chemical plants, while the Grand Canyon becomes a large hole in the ground that a careless Native American is about to walk into. On top of these charming little drawings is a simplified route map of the AT&SF’s lines, stretching from San Francisco to Chicago.

Our rating: Gorgeous 1950s design sensibilities, although definitely more an advertisement than a practical, useful map. Four stars.

Source: Vintage Disneyland Tickets website

Unofficial Map: Singapore MRT, 2013 by Andrew Smithers

November 21, 2013
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As promised, here’s an unofficial map of Singapore’s rail transit that takes the future extensions and integrates them far more effectively and attractively than the official future map. This map was created by Andrew Smithers, who runs the quite excellent Project Mapping website – well worth losing a few hours to all the maps he has over there!

Immediately, you can see how design is used to simplify and clarify the routes – the Thomson Line becomes a north-south axis for the map, while the new Downtown Line now describes a perfect diamond-shaped loop. This motif is echoed beautifully by the larger loop of the yellow Circle Line – which visually lives up to its name far more here than on the official map – and even by the little double-crossover between the Downtown and North East lines at the bottom centre of the map. Repetition of design themes in a transit map is a lovely thing, and it really helps to hold a map together thematically.

That’s not to say that everything is perfect, however. The station codes – used to help non-English speakers buy tickets and navigate the system – are just as problematic here as they are on the official map. Andrew has opted to place them on the opposite side of the route line to the station name; while it works well in the less-crowded parts of the map, it can get a little messy in places, especially where the Downtown Line runs close to the North East and Circle Lines in the densest part of the map (just to the right of centre).

Our rating: A lovely example of how repeated design elements can thematically tie a map together. Four stars.

Source: Via email discussion with Andrew

Future Map: Singapore MRT with Future Extensions

November 21, 2013
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I reviewed the official Singapore MRT map back in January 2012, and was generally in favour of it (giving it four stars). So it’s interesting to look at this version of the map, which includes extensions that are currently under construction or in the final stages of planning. There are two entirely new lines — the blue Downtown Line and the brown Thomson Line, as well as an eastern extension to the green East-West Line. There’s also a new light rail loop being added to the far north-eastern sector of the city.

The problem with this map is that the new lines have simply been overlaid on top of the existing older version, and they then have to take some very strange and visually unattractive routes to “join the dots” where they interchange with existing stations. The dashed “under construction” lines also align poorly with station ticks, leaving some of them floating in space between dashes. Finally, the downtown area is also becoming a little tangled and cramped because of all the new additions.

This map still does a very good job, and is still a very competently executed piece. However, some more thought about how to restructure it so that the new lines could be better integrated would definitely have been welcome.

As it happens, I have an unofficial map that definitely does consider how to incorporate the new lines in a more thoughtful manner… but you’ll have to wait for my next post to see it!

Our rating: The original map provides a solid base, but the new additions really aren’t integrated with much thought. A downgrade to three stars.

Source: Singapore Land Transport Authority website (link no longer active)

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 labels should be applied according to a consistent set of rules.

My first common rule is to make sure that there’s enough space between the route line or station marker and the text: I see way too many maps where the labels are jammed right up to the line (often in a vain effort to save a little bit of space).

That said, let’s take a look at how I like to approach labels on my maps. The first image shows a sample label: I chose the name “Washington” simply because it has a good mix of letters that work well as an example: importantly, it has both ascending and descending letters. I’ve marked out the four main vertical typographical elements: these are the cap height, the x-height, the text’s baseline and the descender line.

Behind this, I’ve shaded an area in pink that I like to call the “Core Type Area” – the height from the baseline up to the cap height. I use this Core Type Area to determine how to align labels to other elements of the map. I discount the height of the letters below the baseline simply because sometimes a word doesn’t have any descending letters at all. This becomes important when setting up labels that sit above a horizontal route line, as we’ll see below.

The second image is an animated GIF that shows two different ways to align labels to station markers on a vertical route line. It shows magenta guides indicating the Core Type Area and thicker cyan guides that simply indicate that all the labels are a consistent difference away from their station marker. I’ve shown the two most common types of station marker: dots and ticks.

The first and third sets of labels centre the type vertically using the baseline and the x-height, while the second and fourth use the height of the Core Type Area. Both of these approaches produce good results, although I personally believe that the Core Type Area method looks slightly better regardless of whether the label is to the left or the right of the line.

The last GIF shows how using the Core Type Area gives consistent results when placing labels above and below a horizontal route line. As you can see, the cyan guides are the same length each time, but though we align labels beneath the route line to the cap height (the top of the Core Type Area), we align labels that are above the route line to the type’s baseline (the bottom of the Core Type Area), not the descender line. That’s because a lot of words don’t have any descenders in them: in these cases, the label would look as if they were too far away from the station marker in comparison to labels that are below the line. The trick here is to make sure you’ve got enough space between the descender line and your station marker/route line to ensure that they don’t touch or overlap.

Next time, we’ll tackle labels on diagonal route lines.

Fantasy Map: Mente Subterránea by Miguel Andrés, 2010

November 19, 2013
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Thanks to reader alber for pointing me to this, a nicely different take on the “brain as subway map” theme. This one seems to be based more on medical fact than the HSBC ad I featured this morning, though that does mean that the route lines are a little wobblier and less adherent to a 45-degree grid than I’d normally like to see.

The routes seem to be named after parts of the brain, with intermediate stops representing what that part is responsible for: “Dreams”, “Aggressiveness”, “Object Names”, etc. Interchange stations represent major functional centres in the brain, giving us the rather charmingly-named “Medulla Main Station” and “Gustatory Cortex Gardens”, among others.

A nicely cheeky “MIND” logo that echoes the famous London Underground roundel finishes things off nicely. About the only thing I don’t care for is the somewhat ugly compass rose, although it does seem to cleverly indicate the “left” and “right” sides of the brain, rather than compass directions.

One last thing: why is the left eye pointing in a different direction to the right?

Source: Miguel Andrés’ website

Fantasy Map: “Brain” Subway for HSBC Ad Campaign by Triboro Designs

November 18, 2013
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A nicely executed concept, and better drawn than a lot of actual subway maps (Note the nicely nested curves when multiple route lines change direction!). Not quite sure what’s going on with the light green route as it crosses over the central trunk, but hey… it’s a BRAIN, not a real transit system.

Source: Triboro Designs website

Historical Photo: Detroit Department of Street Railways (DSR) Coach and Car Stop Locator, c. 1955

November 16, 2013
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An interesting twist on the old push-button interactive transit map. Instead of pressing a button to map out your route, here you press a button to find out where in Detroit’s downtown area to board your bus or streetcar. Although difficult to make out, the text along the bottom of the map seems to read: “To locate your loading zone, press button on your line.” I’m not entirely sure how successful this innovation was, as everyone in the photo seems to have an air of confusion about them.

Source: Wayne State University Libraries

“Tokyo and Mexico Subway Maps” Painting by Kim Tackett

November 14, 2013
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Ahh, nothing like some subway map-inspired art to start your day. I quite like this!

Source: kim.tackett/Flickr

Photo: Tube Map Livery on GB Railfreight Engine 66721

November 14, 2013
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A couple of great photos showing the unique Underground Map-themed livery on GB Railfreight engine 66721. The left side of the engine shows a portion of the original 1933 H.C. Beck design, while the right side shows the corresponding part of the 2013 Tube map. I believe that this engine  is used to perform maintenance work on sections of the Underground, so the theme is certainly appropriate, as is the engine’s name plaque, seen in the lower image – “Harry Beck”

Source: Michael Thorne/Flickr – top image | bottom image

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 quickly change things if required later on. The downside is the need to adjust margins via the tedious Character palette, although is that actually any worse than manually nudging with arrow keys?

Via: pw3n:

This post is in response to Cameron Booth’s Point Type Label tutorial on his rather excellent Transit Maps blog. I’m writing this here because it feels a bit more efficient than bombarding him with a few dozen tweets.

I too use point type for labels on transit maps. But I also like to integrate paragraph and character styles wherever possible. I do this because, in theory, it makes it easier if I decide much later that I need to make a broad sweeping change (like choosing a new typeface or updating the character colour).

What I’ve also found is that by adjusting indents and baseline shifts, I can place the text point right in the middle of a station dot or at the intersection of two gridlines (see the second and third pictures for example; I’ve also shown how it can work for different station markers). If you’re using Smart Guides, everything should snap nicely into place.

Here’s a sample set up, which you can see in the first picture:

  • A character style for the basics, such as font family, size, leading, tracking, colour. I made a second style for a terminus station which is the same as the base, but with bold weight.
  • A number of paragraph styles for a variety of station type alignments. Here I’ve got a map with lines at 45 degree angles, so I’ve eight styles and named them after compass directions.
  • I made one bonus style to show how you can set one up for text that’s been rotated (and yet the text point remains in the middle of the station marker).

Now the whole point of Mr. Booth’s post was to show that Illustrator doesn’t actually align text precisely; some manual adjustment is necessary to get everything looking optically correct. He moved each label manually. My method doesn’t solve the problem of requiring some adjustment. But now instead of moving each label, you leave the label in place and adjust the left or right paragraph indent (see last picture).

There are some downsides to this technique  The primary problem I run into is with multiple line station labels. If the label has a positive baseline shift, then you’re going to need to update the baseline manually or create a new paragraph style. And then you might start to end up with an unwieldy amount of styles.

Another downside here is that manual adjustments override the paragraph style. So if you update the style at a later date, it may not affect something you’ve adjusted manually (it depends on what you’re updating).

Lastly, there is the issue of Illustrator itself. Its paragraph and character styles palette just isn’t that great, especially compared to InDesign. I don’t blame it; Illustrator is meant for… illustration. But having spent years building books in InDesign, you really notice what’s missing in Illustrator’s style options. InDesign has so much more; you can create keyboard shortcuts for specific styles, you can have styles based on other styles, you can reorder the styles. Illustrator does well, but I often find myself frustrated with it.

Is this an ideal solution? Not entirely. it is very mathematical, so to get everything looking perfect you’re still going to need to do a lot of eyeball adjustments. However, I find it’s a good way to get everything set up initially and keep things consistent throughout a project.