Submitted by Peter, who says:
Hello! I’m very much new to Illustrator, but I have a love of transit and a budding love of graphic design, and reading your wonderful blog has inspired me to try and pick it up. For practice, I tried turning one of my childhood daydreams into reality — a hypothetical map for a light rail system for my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is a notoriously anti-transit town with just a subpar bus system to its name, and it would be great if I could possibly use this map to start some dialogue back home and get people thinking about the possibility again. Any suggestions for improving either the map or the system idea itself (if you’re familiar with Louisville) would be greatly appreciated!
Transit Maps says:
Not being familiar with Louisville at all, I can’t really comment much on your ideas behind the system, except to say that it looks plausible — if expensive — to build.
The map itself is a solid, workmanlike effort. I like the slightly unusual use of 30/60-degree angles, which seems to fit the actual layout of the city well (at least, from what a quick look at Google Maps tells me), and the general design is fairly clean and uncluttered.
I think the number of directional arrows you use in the downtown area is overkill — use either station icons with arrows or arrows between the stations, not both. If you do use arrows between stations, I really don’t think you need an arrow between every station: one strategically located along each straight section of track should be enough to remind your users which way they’re going. There’s also an error with the arrow on 2nd Avenue between Oak and Magnolia: it should point north, not south.
I find the Interstates are a little too light to make them out easily, and they could perhaps be handled a little more stylishly and also simplified more. The jog in I-65 north of I-264 seems a little unnecessarily detailed to me.
Here’s a few questions for you to consider:
Do we actually need to see the runways at the airport? What benefit does showing them give the users of the map?
Would showing the northern bank of the river give a little more geographic context? I find that it looks more like a lake at present. Could you simplify its shape by using the same 30/60 degree angles used elsewhere? This could bring a unifying design element to the map.
How can you make your station labeling more consistent? I’ve never really been a huge fan of multiple angles to make things fit. Your map is very open and spacious, there could be other alternative ways of doing it.
Finally, “Home of the Innocents” is possibly the most awesome name for a light rail stop ever.
