Unofficial Map: Beijing Subway by Cameron Hughes

November 8, 2013
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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
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“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

Historical Map: The Burlington Route (Chicago to San Francisco), 1879

November 6, 2013
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Here’s a beautiful map from the glory days of American railroading, showing the route from Chicago to San Francisco via Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. Amtrak’s modern-day California Zephyr still calls at many of the same locations between Chicago and Omaha to the east and from Elko to Oakland in the west, but takes a different route through the middle, using Colorado instead of Wyoming.

Although presented as one continuous route, the journey is actually made up of smaller sections owned by multiple railroad companies: the section from Chicago to Omaha is the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, then Union Pacific to Sacramento and the Western Pacific the rest of the way. Many other railroads have track that connects to and branches off this main trunk route – Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, Utah Central & Southern, Utah & Northern, Central Railroad of Iowa… the list seems endless!

The map itself is packed full of information: the population of towns, connecting rail and stagecoach services, the distance from either Chicago or San Francisco, the elevation of the railroad (cleverly shown as a green profile line below the map), and even the terrain type and major industries and land uses along the way – “heavy timber”, “gold and silver mines”, “elegant farms”, etc. Poor Stockton, CA is noted for its “insane asylum” (see detail image above). As the blurb at the bottom of the map proclaims, “Armed with this Guide, the passenger needs no further information.”

About the only thing that lets this map down is the low quality printing. There’s a lot of poorly registered colours, which slightly spoil the flamboyant and stylish look of the map. The design certainly asks a lot of a late-19th century (pre-offset lithography) printing press!

Our rating: A superb piece of American railroading ephemera, only slightly spoiled by poor printing. Four-and-a-half stars!

Source: The Big Map Blog

Tutorial: Applying a Stroke Behind Type in Adobe Illustrator

November 5, 2013
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Let me preface this tutorial by saying that — without a shadow of a doubt — this is my number one most favourite, time-saving, map-making Adobe Illustrator trick ever.

When making transit maps, it’s preferable — for both aesthetics and readability — to not have any labels overlay a route line or other elements. However, sometimes it’s simply unavoidable, as in the detail of my Boston MBTA map redesign at the top of the image above (circled in blue). When you absolutely have to overlay type over another element, it’s a good idea to separate it from that element with a stroke (or “keyline”) around the type that’s the same colour as your map’s background (often white with transit maps).

“Well, that’s easy,” I hear you say, “I’ll just duplicate the text, put the copy behind the original and apply a stroke to that duplicate!”

That’s well and good for isolated examples, but what if you’ve got lots of text that you need to do this to? Or what if you make a typo in the label? Using this method, you’d have to correct it twice – once for each duplicate of the label.

There’s a better way to do it: you just need to know one little trick.

STEP ONE above shows a typical text label and Illustrator’s Appearance palette (Window menu > Appearance or Shift-F6). Note that the text is made up of a black fill with no stroke: the standard appearance for text.

In STEP TWO, I’ve applied a 2-point magenta stroke to the text (You’d probably want to use the same stroke colour as the background of your map; I’ve just used magenta to make the effect easier to see). The stroke sits on top of the fill in the stacking order, and — try as you might — can’t be demoted to sit underneath the fill, where we want it to be: note how the visibility icons for each are greyed out, meaning they can’t be moved. Strangely, the stacking order of text fills and strokes cannot be changed in Illustrator.

(If you’ve ever tried to add a stroke to a text object in Illustrator before, this is where you’ve probably given up in disgust.)

So, here’s the good bit.

In STEP THREE, I’ve drawn a rectangle and given it the fill and stroke that we want the text to eventually have: a black fill and a 2-point magenta stroke. I also like to give my stroke corners a round join — it softens the stroke a little and generally looks better than a mitre join.

Unlike type objects, the stacking order for normal objects or paths is editable, so — while the rectangle is selected — drag the stroke below the path in the Appearance palette. The stroke will now sit behind the fill on the actual rectangle.

STEP FOUR: Open the Graphic Styles palette (Window menu > Graphic Styles or Shift-F5) and drag the rectangle into the palette. You’ve just made a graphic style out of the attributes of the rectangle (stacking order included), which you can now apply to other objects with just a couple of clicks. If you like, give it a descriptive name: I’ve called mine “Keylined Type”.

STEP FIVE: Delete the rectangle: it’s done its work. Select the label text, then click on your newly created “Keylined Text” graphic style. The label now has a stroke that sits behind the fill, just where we want it, as STEP SIX shows in the Appearance palette. Even better, the fill and stroke are now fully adjustable and editable — change the colour, stroke width, or even move the stroke back above the fill!

For new labels that need to look the same, you can either duplicate the one you’ve just made, or simply type the label and then apply the graphic style as needed. No more typing text labels twice, just because you need a keyline around it!

ADDENDUM: There’s always more than one way to do things in Adobe Illustrator. As I’ve had pointed out to me, you can skip the step that requires you to draw and style another object by adding a new stroke to the text in a particular way. If you select your text with the arrow tool, and then use the “Add New Stroke” button at the bottom of the Appearance palette (or the same command via the palette’s flyout menu), that stroke becomes fully editable and stackable. You can then make a new graphic style directly from your text. Why does it work when you add a stroke to text via the palette and not when you add it by simply clicking on a colour to use as a stroke? No good reason I can see!

P.S. If you like this tip, or any others that I’ve posted under the “tutorials” category, please feel free to share, reblog or tweet about it – let’s share the knowledge!

Submission – Unofficial Map: Sydney Trains Aerial Image

November 4, 2013
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Submitted by thatlattesipper.

Sydney Trains routes (complete with new “T-line” branding) for the north and west of the city overlaid on a Google Earth image.

If nothing else, this map reminds us of how staggeringly huge Greater Sydney really is. It’s 20 kilometres in a straight line from the dot representing Central Station at the lower left to Hornsby (just off the right of the map), and over 30km from Central to Prospect Reservoir, the large body of water just glimpsed at the centre top of the map. And this view doesn’t even show the entire southern half of the city (it’s another 20km from Central south to Waterfall) or Western Sydney from Prospect out to Emu Plains.

Some perspective: Greater Sydney has a population of around 4.6 million and an area of 12,100 square km (a population density of just 380 people per square km). The five boroughs of New York City have a population of 8.3 million in just 786 square km (or approximately 10,600 people per square km!)

Historical Map: Thüringerwaldbahn Tram Mural, Tabarz, East Germany, 1989

November 4, 2013
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A photo from 1989 of a newly-painted mural celebrating 60 years of the Thüringerwaldbahn, an interurban tram service running 22km between Gotha and Tabarz.

As the original poster on Flickr notes, the scale of the map is “fanciful”, but it’s really meant more as a (rather lovely) decorative overview than an actual map.

I’d be interested to know if the mural is still there, some 24-odd years later.

Source: sludgegulper/Flickr

Historical Map: New York IRT Sytem Baseball Season Opening Map, 1923

November 1, 2013
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A simple little map from “The Elevated Express” gazette showing the convenience of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company’s services to “all three parks” – Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers), Polo Grounds (New York Giants) and Yankee Stadium (New York Yankees).

The last stadium is of particular interest as this is the year that it opened – the first game at Yankee Stadium was held April 18th, 1923 against the Boston Red Sox. According to the New York Evening Telegram, “everything smelled of … fresh paint, fresh plaster and fresh grass.”

Source: Gary H./Flickr – link no longer active

Historical Map: Montreal Tramways Company, 1941

October 31, 2013
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Here’s a very handsome map of transit in 1941 Montreal, provided by the Montreal Tramways Company, or La Compagnie des Tramways de Montreal. Despite the name, there’s also a healthy (and growing) number of bus routes on this map, shown in blue. 

Cleverly, the map rotates the city away from true north in order to fit everything onto the sheet of paper allocated, and the north pointer used is simply lovely, even including the company’s “MTC” monogram.

The map does a lot with just three colours, clearly differentiating between bus and tram services while highlighting regular services versus supplementary/rush hour ones with a minimum of fuss. The callout boxes for main stations are lovely, with the names contained within an ornate scroll at the top of the box.

My favourite part of the map, however, is how it effortlessly deals with the requirement to present information in both French and English. It even goes so far as to have one information box say “Index of/des Routes” while the other states “Index des/of Routes”, so that no-one feels that the other side got a better deal.

Finally, the roundel that the MTC uses for its logo looks awfully familiar...

Our rating: Quite lovely – clear and stylish. Four stars!

Source: Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec via Taras Grescoe

Historical Map: Boston Rapid Transit Map in Type 6 Mock-up Carriage, c. 1968

October 30, 2013
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Here’s a variant Boston MBTA map I’ve never seen before: a version with 60-degree angled lines, instead of 45 degrees. Apart from that, it looks very much like the standard late-1960s/early 1970s Cambridge 7 spider map, although there’s some weird inconsistencies like the Green Line “A” Watertown branch (closed 1968) and Quincy Center (opened 1971) on the same map.

Here’s the interesting part. This map lives in the one and only mock-up of an MBTA “Type 6” train carriage at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. This wooden mock-up was created in 1968 by MBTA engineers to allow stakeholders and the public to judge the design’s layout and comfort, but the carriage was eventually deemed too expensive to produce. The MBTA ended up procuring the (incredibly unreliable) Boeing-Vertol LRTs instead. So… this map may actually be as unique as the mock-up that houses it: the only one of its kind. If anyone knows anything more about this variant, I’d love to hear about it!

Source: Eric Kilby/Flickr – thanks to Boston to a T for further info on the mock-up

Tutorial: Multiple Strokes on One Path in Adobe Illustrator

October 29, 2013
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This little tip is thanks to RG, who left a comment on the site asking:

“Can you comment on how you make the 2pt of white space between lines show when you have lines cross over each other?”

On most transit maps, route lines will cross over each other at various points. Most of the time, an interchange station exists at that point and the symbol for that covers up the lines as they cross. However, sometimes the route lines will cross without any interaction between them – maybe there’s a bridge, or the lines are in separate tunnels – and it’s a good idea to visually separate them to make that as clear as possible.

STEP 1 above shows the set up: the Red and Blue lines cross over the Yellow and Green lines. As in the last tutorial, these are 8-point-thick lines set on a 10-point grid: I’ll use this a lot, just because it makes the maths easier to follow.

As you can see, the resulting 2pt gap between the Red and Blue lines allows the Yellow and Green lines to butt right up to them and show through the gap – neither of which is desirable. The quick and dirty approach to this problem might be to copy the Red and Blue lines, Paste in Back (Cmd/Ctrl-B), change the stroke colour to white and make these new strokes thicker. This does work, but it’s not the best approach in my eyes. It makes moving or editing those paths further down the track a two-step process (move the coloured route lines, then move the white lines that were underneath them), or a very fiddly single step: selecting objects behind other ones can be a real pain.

So I like to take advantage of a little-used feature of Adobe Illustrator – the fact that one path can have multiple strokes applied to it.

In STEP ONE, I’ve selected the Blue Line and made the Appearance palette visible (Window menu > Appearance or Shift-F6). To add a second stroke to the existing Blue one, simply click and drag that stroke down to the “Duplicate Selected Item” icon at he bottom of the palette as indicated. You can also just click on the stroke, then click on the icon, but I find it more satisfying to drag for some reason. If you really want, you can use the little flyout menu at the top right of the palette and choose “Add New Stroke” or “Duplicate Item” while you have the stroke selected in the main palette.

Bingo! The path now has two strokes, both of which are identical. Fortunately, the palette gives you everything you need to change the new stroke, as shown in STEP TWO. Use the little colour selector to change the second stroke in the palette (which is the stroke that’s behind the other one: the palette displays the stacking order of the path’s elements) to white, then change its stroke width.

The maximum amount you can increase the stroke by is twice the gap between your route lines – in this case, that’s four points (twice two), for a maximum width of 12 points. Any more than this, and the white stroke would start overlapping the Red line next to it. Normally, this amount is exactly what we’re after, so it’s not really a concern.

STEP THREE simply shows the result of performing the same steps on the Red line. Done! The advantage of this technique is that both strokes – being on the same path – can be moved or edited at the same time: there’s no need to fiddle around with two separate paths, one on top of the other.

And if you’re really smart, you’ll make Graphic Styles of these double-stroked lines, so that you can apply them again in the future with just one click.