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

November 16, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

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
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Miscellany
Tags:

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
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps, Miscellany
Tags:

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
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Tutorials
Tags:

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.

Tutorial: Working with Point Type Labels in Adobe Illustrator

November 13, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Tutorials
Tags:

Here’s a small but important tip when it comes to working with station labels in Adobe Illustrator. Most of the time, it’s easier to use what Illustrator calls point type when setting labels – that is, you click once with the Type Tool and then type your text, rather than dragging out a text frame with the tool. It looks neater in wireframe view and is generally less cumbersome to work with.

However, you need to be aware that the text you type almost never aligns with the point that you’ve created. Because of the letter spacing that’s baked into each character, there’s a small – but noticeable – gap between the point and the adjacent character (the last letter if the type is right-aligned; the first if it’s left-aligned).

Take the example above. I’ve drawn up a quick “Red Line” with station ticks to the left and right. I’ve then drawn cyan guidelines at the distance away from those station markers that I want the text to be. The fanciful station names simply illustrate a variety of starting or ending letterforms – straight, rounded, and so on.

As you can see on the example on the left, although the text point is perfectly aligned to the guides, the letters actually never quite touch them. Worse, the gap is a little bit different in each case. It may not look like much, but consistency is the key in well-designed transit maps. In my opinion, the little details like this are worth fussing over to create the very best work.

The sample to the right shows the difference when you individually nudge the labels across so that the text touches the guideline: much better! Note that the rounded letterforms overlap the guidelines slightly, while straight-edged letters like “d” at the end of a word or “B” at the beginning align perfectly. Much as rounded lowercase letters like “o”, “e” and “s” actually sit a little below the baseline, so too do these characters need to sit a little across the guidelines here to look optically correct. It’s the same for the initial “J” and “T” in the left-aligned names: the empty space around the characters needs to be compensated for slightly to look right.

Stay tuned for more tips regarding labels, as I think their implementation is one of the most neglected parts of transit map design.

Unofficial Maps: Other Salt Lake City Rail Transit Maps

November 11, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

A selection of alternate maps for Salt Lake City that I’ve received as submissions or that I’ve found on the Internet. The first two maps – by thatlattesipper and scsj, respectively – were sent to me in the aftermath of Friday’s review of the UTA’s latest absymal effort, and must therefore have only had a few hours of work put into them.

Scsj’s map was actually produced by an online transit map generator in less than three hours and also includes the “MAX” bus rapid transit line. While it runs into problems because the stations from Meadowbrook to Courthouse run at a 45-degree angle instead of conforming to Salt Lake City’s street grid, the very fact that a free online tool can produce a more competent map in three hours than a sizeable transit agency can in six months is damning in the extreme.

The third map is by cranialdetritus and is possibly the nicest-looking of the bunch. The inclusion of the Free Fare Zone is a very welcome touch. Routes should be designated by their official numbers, however (701 = Blue Line, etc.).

The fourth is taken from Wikipedia’s page about the UTA, and is theonly map not to currently show the new streetcar line.. It’s not actually that great a map, but I would still venture that it’s better than the real thing.

The fifth map was featured a while back on Transit Maps (December 2012, 3.5 stars), and is also streets ahead of the official map.

So, that’s five completely unofficial maps that outshine the real thing, and I bet there’s more out there as well. Sad, really…

Historical Map: Interactive Moscow Metro Map, c. 1968

November 11, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Historical Maps
Tags:

Sent in by long-time Transit Maps reader and contributor, @dars_dm, here’s a great old photo of an interactive map kiosk in the Moscow Metro. Push a button, and your route lights up! Apparently, these displays were common at many Metro stations through the early 1970s. Highly reminiscent of the Paris Metro’s plan indicateur lumineux d’itinéraires (or PILI), an example of which I featured previously.

Source: PastVu website via @dars_dm

Official Map: Salt Lake City Rail Transit for Opening of New “S Line”

November 8, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

Submitted by the eagle-eyed Garrett Smith, who says:

I must say I am not overly impressed with UTA’s revision of their rail map—which will begin to be posted in trains once UTA’s first streetcar, the S Line, opens. Yes, it certainly is better than before. Removing addresses from the map did wonders for improving legibility. But that’s about it. Call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t the lines below the station names roughly correspond to the length of the word? And why doesn’t N. Temple Bridge/Guadalupe receive a callout box when it also is a transfer station involving TRAX, FrontRunner, and local bus service?

Transit Maps says:

When I last reviewed Salt Lake City’s rail transit map back in April, word reached me via Twitter that the UTA’s graphic designers were hard at work on a new map slated for a December release.

And here we are: hardly worth the wait, really. Tiny baby steps have been taken by removing the street addresses of the stations, but almost all the previous faults are still present. The labelling of stations remains an awful, convoluted mess and the giant callout boxes at transfer stations are still completely unnecessary. Downtown is a disgrace, with eight stations crammed into the tiniest of spaces: so small that most of those stations have to have a smaller station dot to compensate. Meanwhile, the new “S Line” streetcar, which is only 2.1 miles long, stretches luxuriously off to the right side of the map, way larger in scale than it should ever be.

And your brand-new, awesome streetcar gets to be the “gray” line? How exciting.

This map needs to be crumpled up, thrown away and never used as a template again. Seriously, who at the UTA actually approves this? Who actually says, “Wow! That looks great! Let’s print some signs and put it on the website!”

Start from scratch. Abandon the pseudo-geographical layout that actually has no consistent scale. Take a diagrammatic approach and expand the downtown area (so we can read the station names!) while compressing the outlying ones. Make the FrontRunner follow a completely straight path from end to end – a compositional vertical axis for the rest of the map. Ditch the freakin’ terrible compass rose. Anything but this.

Source: Official UTA website

Unofficial Map: Beijing Subway by Cameron Hughes

November 8, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Unofficial Maps
Tags:

Submitted by Cameron, who says:

Hi Cameron, fellow Cameron here! I recently redesigned the Beijing Subway map for an Information Design class (as well as doing a little bit of rebranding and signage/wayfinding design). It’s still a work in progress so I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! You can view the entire project as well as a full-size PDF here.

Transit Maps says:

This looks like an interesting (and somewhat daunting) project! I think you’ve hit the right notes with the logo – the colours are very well chosen and the type is suitably bouncy and friendly. I do wonder whether the Beijing subway would ever actually adopt a logo using an English acronym made out of English characters, but I’ll let that slide because I like it. I especially like the cropped application of it on the subway fare card… nice!

But on to the map.

Other Cameron said that she made it for an Information Design class, so let’s approach it from that point of view. For me, while the map looks very pleasant at first glance, there’s quite a few serious problems that hinder its usefulness as a piece of informational design.

First – and an absolute deal-breaker in my eyes – is that the size of the type is way too small. The PDF of the map is set up at poster size: 36 inches wide by 45 inches deep. Yet the labels for the stations are set in 7-point type. That’s as small as the type on the sports results pages or those disclaimers at the bottom of car ads in a newspaper! It’s barely readable at a close distance, and absolutely invisible in a real world setting – at a station, or inside a moving, crowded subway car. By comparison, if the Washington DC map was at the same width as this poster, the station labels would be set at approximately 26 points, or over three-and-a-half times larger!

Another huge problem is the lack of identifiers on the map that link the route lines to the map’s legend. Each line should have its number or name denoted on the map so that people can cross-reference it to the legend. At the moment, you have to rely solely on colour to determine which line runs where, and that is Not A Good Thing. Even for non-colour-blind users, there’s a quite a few similar-looking colours on the map, as you’d expect with 17 operating lines and five future ones. Once you introduce colour-blindness into the equation, the map is basically useless. Cameron already has line number icons created as part of her wayfinding system, so it shouldn’t be a problem to add them to the map.

SIDE NOTE: Did you know you can simulate colour-blindness in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and above? Simply choose: View menu > Proof Setup > Color Blindness – Protanopia-type or Color Blindness – Deuteranopia-type. I definitely recommend this as a testing step in any information design work!

The map prominently features background concentric rings, but doesn’t tell you what they are. Reading Cameron’s summary of the project, I found out that they’re meant to represent Beijing’s system of ring roads. However, this type of shading is almost always used on transit maps to represent fare zones, so there’s huge potential for confusion here (For the record, Beijing has a flat fare of 2¥ across the entire subway, except for the Airport Express, which costs 25¥). The rings also interfere with the underlying checkerboard pattern for the map’s grid, making it harder to use.

Speaking of the Airport Express, it would be a good idea to indicate that the train goes to Terminal 3 first, then Terminal 2, then back to Beijing.

A few other notes not related to the informational aspect of the map:

I’d prefer to see the three boxes at the bottom of the map combined into one larger one, just for a cleaner, more unified look.

Because of the concentric rings, the map is crying out to be centred horizontally on the page. At the moment, it’s too far to the left, but only because the subway logo at the top right is so large.

I also feel the icons need a little bit more work to unify them. At the moment, most of them are flat, front-on representations, but the “Temple of Heaven” and the “789 Space” icons have a three-dimensional feel to them that separates them from the rest, while the “Beijing Zoo” icon looks uncomfortably like Cameron has just flipped the World Wildlife Fund logo horizontally. While the actual Beijing Zoo logo also features a similar-looking panda, this icon needs some of its own unique character to stand apart from either of these logos.

Finally, I feel like the “circle/rings” motif could be pushed a little further. The further out from the middle of the map we get, the less that the route lines adhere to this design idea. The north-east and south-west sections of the purple Line 14 stand out the most: they follow a curve, but it’s not related to the main set of rings.

At the moment, this map seems to me to be a bit of style over substance. It looks clean, fresh and modern, but has some serious usability issues when you look at it from a information design viewpoint. 

Official Map: “BUZ” Frequent Service Bus Network, Brisbane, Australia

November 6, 2013
Leave a comment
Filed Under:
Official Maps
Tags:

“BUZ” apparently stands for “Bus Upgrade Zone”, a somewhat convoluted way to refer to frequent service routes – every 10 minutes in peak periods and every 15 minutes at other times. That Brisbane has 20 such frequent service routes is actually pretty impressive, but the map itself is not.

What a horrible, twisted, messy, scraggly attempt at a network map this is. Completely diagrammatic in some parts, and overly precise in others: what is with the ridiculous twists in the two routes at the very top of the map? The central part of the map is simply ghastly, with absolutely no thought as to how to group routes together properly. Routes that leave the city headed towards a common direction or destination should all be grouped with each other, not randomly separated as they are here.

Why does the western end of the Maroon Cityglider have a slight non-standard and visually distracting angle applied to it?

Looking at the map, but not the legend, tell me if the last stop at the eastern end of the Maroon Cityglider is Stones Corner or Langlands Park. It’s the former, although the placement of the labels leads you to believe its the latter.

The 90-degree curve on the cyan Route 340 line through the city centre is terribly drawn and – appallingly –  runs into the lime green Route 196 terminus at Merthyr.

Station dots that don’t align with the route line they’re on, badly implemented arrows that point at stations that are too far away from their labels, labels that aren’t consistently aligned (there’s a thought for another tutorial!), insipid typography (Arial!), strange spacing (what’s with the giant empty gap in the middle of the southern leg of Route 100?)… the list of awfulness goes on and on. 

Our rating: Not thought through at all and almost incoherently executed. It’s like a first draft by someone who’s never made a transit map before. Who signs off on these things? One (incredibly generous) star, and that’s only because I was born there and have a sentimental attachment to the place.

Source: Translink Queensland website