Historical Map: 1974 New York MTA Commuter Rail Map

March 11, 2013
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Submitted by dpecs, who says:

Vignelli-inspired map (designer unknown) of the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Roads. On display until March 15th at the New York Transit Museum’s exhibit Grand By Design, on the centennial of Grand Central Terminal.

Transit Maps says:

Designer unknown? The amazing book “Helvetica and the New York City Subway” attributes this map to one Joan Charysyn, saying she designed it freelance in between stints at Vignelli Associates and Unimark. It’s my understanding that the map was designed to be part of a three-map system (commuter rail, subway, and locality map) that was meant to be displayed at every station. However, the scheme (much to Massimo Vignelli’s constant disgust) never really eventuated.

To my mind, this map isn’t quite as successful as Vignelli’s subway map, mainly because the Long Island RR is one uniform blue throughout, meaning the map provides very little in the way of routing information. This is probably fine for regular commuters, who know which train they need to catch, but isn’t so great for non-regular users of the system. It’s still a fine example of early 1970s transit map design, and is obviously the inspiration for this modern map (Jan 2013, 4.5 stars) of the Metro-North lines that I’ve featured previously.

Transit Map Typefaces: Other Styles (Part 4 of 4)

March 9, 2013
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To be honest, this is a pretty small category and I’m only including it for completeness’ sake.

Included in this category are san serif fonts that don’t fall into any of the three major categories, veering more towards the decorative or ornamental. Examples of this include the Madrid Metro’s severe, squared off typeface (that matches the aesthetics of the map almost perfectly), and the similar, but less successful, square font that was once used in Naples. Most famously of all, there’s also Lance Wyman’s custom Tipo Metro font for the Mexico City Metro.

Use of an unusual typeface like these needs to be considered very carefully: while they can give your map its own unique look, they can also date very quickly as design trends and fashions change.

The last typeface I want to share with you is that rarest of beasts: a serif font. Of all the maps I’ve featured on Transit Maps, the Tyne & Wear Metro is the only one that has serifs used on the labels on the map itself. It helps that it’s a beautiful slab serif face, both designed by and named after the famous Margaret Calvert. If anyone can find another example of a serif font on a transit map, let me know!

Transit Map Typefaces: Humanist Sans (Part 3 of 4)

March 8, 2013
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The third – and most diverse – category of sans serif typefaces is known as humanist sans. Compared to the grotesque and geometric categories, humanist sans typefaces almost calligraphic, with a natural variation in line weight and open characters that enhance legibility. With less “rules” to their construction, there’s a much greater variety of letter forms – meaning it’s easier to find a typeface that projects its own unique personality upon your map, which can be good to give that vital sense of “place” to your map and help it stand out from the crowd.

One of the most popular humanist sans serif fonts used in transit map design is Erik Spiekermann’s FF Meta – I’ve featured examples from Zurich, Vancouver, BC and Rio de Janeiro, which does some terrible things to a lovely typeface.

(You actually can’t go wrong with most of Spiekermann’s sans serif typefaces, as many of them were specifically designed for wayfinding or road signage.)

Frutiger – originally designed as a wayfinding typeface for Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport in 1968 – is also popular, and is used here by Auckland and Rotterdam.

Adobe’s Myriad Pro is also used quite a lot: it has a lot of weights and widths, so it’s very versatile. Hong Kong’s MTR uses it, and I’ve used it pretty extensively in my own maps.

As well as these commercially available fonts, many transit agencies use their own custom typefaces that are humanist sans serif. The London Underground’s Johnston Sans is probably the most famous of these, although I see it as a geometric/humanist hybrid, rather than a true humanist sans. Other custom humanist sans include the Paris Metro’s Parisine, and the similarly named Brusseline for Brussels’ Metro system.

Next: Other typefaces!

Transit Map Typefaces: Geometric Sans (Part 2 of 4)

March 6, 2013
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Geometric sans serif typefaces – as their name suggests – are based on geometrical shapes, especially circles for their “o”. Many of these typefaces have their roots in the 1920s and 1930s, and often reflect the Art Deco aesthetic of that period.

Of the three sans serif categories, this is my least favourite for use on transit maps. Their rigid reliance on geometry makes them a little inflexible in use, and because many of the characters are so wide, the x-height is almost always small. This contributes to that Art Deco feel, but doesn’t help legibility very much. In general, the condensed versions of geometric sans typefaces don’t match their standard variants very well, as the “perfect circle” of the round letterforms has to be sacrificed in order to achieve condensation.  

Use of geometric sans serifs on transit maps include: Avant Garde Condensed on the Dallas DART map, Geometric 415 on the Maryland MTA map (actually works pretty well), Futura on Atlanta’s MARTA map, and Futura Condensed on this Freiburg im Breisgau map.

If you really need an Art Deco vibe to your map, then you could use a geometric sans, but I’d stay clear otherwise.

Next: Humanist sans serif – the big category!

Transit Map Typefaces: Grotesque Sans (Part 1 of 4)

March 6, 2013
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This series of posts is inspired by an anonymous poster, who requested some information on typography in transit map design.

Almost without exception*, modern transit maps use sans serif typefaces for their labelling. Sans serif literally translates to English as “without [a] serif”, and denotes that the typeface does not have serifs: those little nubs at the top and bottom of characters that can help the eye follow large amounts of text.

The practice of using sans serif typefaces in transit maps dates right back to Harry Beck’s first London Underground diagram (Johnston Sans) and even earlier. Today, a transit map that uses anything other than a sans serif typeface would just look “wrong” to our eyes, although there is still a huge and ever-increasing variety of fonts from which to choose.

Within the general category of sans serif typefaces, typographical designers define smaller subsets. Generally speaking, sans serif typefaces can be split into one of three categories: Grotesque (and the Neo-Grotesque fonts based on these early designs), Geometrical and Humanist. We’ll cover each of these in the first three parts of this series.

Of these, the “Grotesque” typefaces are the oldest, with some designs dating back to c. 1816. At the time, many thought the style of type extremely ugly and strange – the disparaging moniker “grotesque” stuck, right up to the present day.

The most famous of the (neo) grotesque typefaces is, of course, Helvetica. This almost ubiquitous font is – unsurprisingly – heavily used by transit maps, including those of Washington, DC and Boston. New York’s current subway map uses Helvetica Condensed.

Other Grotesque typefaces that I’ve seen commonly used for transit maps include Univers (Montreal and Stuttgart) and DIN (Los Angeles, Oslo and Prague).

Grotesque fonts are a good, safe choice for transit map design. The letterforms are clear and the x-height of the lower case letters is generally large, which aids legibility, even at smaller point sizes. The main problem is that they can sometimes feel a bit sterile: their simple, unstressed letter forms can make it hard for them to project any sort of personality onto the map. Helvetica suffers somewhat from overuse, but it is undoubtedly powerful when coupled with that clean, minimalist “Swiss” style of design that was so prevalent in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Next: Geometric sans serif typefaces

* Of course, there’s always exceptions to rules, and we’ll cover those in Part 4!

Photo: Vignelli NYC Subway Map – Street Grid

March 1, 2013
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An image from Massimo Vignelli’s recent talk at the New York Transit Museum about the development of his (in)famous diagram. The chance to hear Vignelli talk about his work really makes me wish that I lived in New York.

Anyway, I find this image particularly interesting because it shows the underlying grid of streets and avenues that was used to place the route lines accurately. Although the map we see here appears to be the 2008 revision (which then evolved into “Weekender” map), you can be certain that the original 1970s version was based on a similarly exacting grid: order and structure in design is what Massimo Vignelli is famous for, after all.

Source: *Bitch Cakes*/Flickr

Photo: (Back in) Time Tunnel

March 1, 2013
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I love it when people find old transit maps still in situ at stations. This Northern Line map at Embankment dates from sometime prior to 1999 (the year that the Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross closed), but is still in place today – this photo was taken on February 21, 2013.

Note also the beautiful 1914 green glazed tiles next to the map.

Source: stavioni/Flickr

Photo: Brussels Metro Line Map and Next Train Countdown

February 28, 2013
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A companion piece to the official map (Dec. 2012, 3 stars) on the platform at Rogier station. The look of this map marries with the official map quite well, showing an admirable consistency in application.

Rogier station itself is clearly shown with a nice big arrow and stations before it on the lines are clearly indicated against greyed-out route lines. There’s also a nicely legible countdown for the next two trains, indicating their route number (2 or 6), final destination and estimated time in minutes to arrival. It even looks like the position of all the trains on the line headed in the same direction are shown on the strip map as bright red lights. Now you can see where that train you just missed has got to without you!

The only thing this map fails to show is the circular nature of the routes that the station serves. Routes 2 and 6 form Brussels’ “circle line”, and the two terminus stations for Route 2 – Simonis (Elisabeth) and Simonis (Leopold II) – are really just two different levels of the same Metro station.

Source: Ian YVR/Flickr

Photo: Red Line L Train

February 25, 2013
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Rather lovely strip map for the Red Line at Lake station. The Cubs logo in place of the station dot at Addison station is a very deft touch – providing useful information without detracting from the simplicity of the map.

Source: Taekwonweirdo/Flickr

Official Map: CTrain, Calgary, Canada, 2013

February 22, 2013
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Lots of people have requested this map, but I’ve held off for a while as some extensions to the system and amendments to the map itself have been made. Calgary Transit actually released a preliminary version of this map last year and asked for public input on it via an on-line survey, which is good to see. However, it’s not the most thrilling map, and there’s still one quirk with it that could cause some confusion.

Have we been there? No.

What we like: Clean, minimal, easy-to-follow design. No extraneous bells and whistles to get in the way of a relatively simple system.

What we don’t like: I really don’t see the need to alternate the station labels between the left and right hand side of the route lines when they run vertically. The names would be much easier to quickly read if they just ran underneath each other to the right of the route line, much like a bulleted list. It looks particularly odd on the southern part of the Red Line, where Victoria Park/Stampede and Erlton/Stampede are both to the right, and then the rest alternate.

The quirk I mention above regards the handling of the stations along 7th Avenue in the “Downtown Area” of the map. City Hall is the only station in the section where both lines run that serves both directions of travel – the rest of the stations alternate directions. The 1st, 4th and 7th Street stops serve all westbound trains, and the 8th, 6th, 3rd and Centre Street stops serve all eastbound trains.

The designers have tried to show this by use of a directional arrow near each station. However, by placing these arrows within the coloured route lines, it could be interpreted that only Blue Line trains travel west and only Red Line trains travel east along this corridor. This ambiguity could have been averted by placing the arrows within the station dots or next to the station names themselves, where it would be almost impossible to misinterpret their intention.

However, the approach used here is still markedly better than the one used on the preliminary sample map, which placed the dots for all westbound trains in the Blue Line, and all eastbound dots in the Red Line! Now that would have been confusing!

Our rating: Workmanlike and honest, if a little dull. Two-and-a-half stars.

Source: Official Calgary Transit website