Photo: Santa Consulting Map in Subway

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Santa: “Excuse me, but which stop should I use for Macy’s?”

Her: “Why did I sit under the subway map?!”

Photo credit: Erich Hartmann

“Storylines”: the Literary London Tube Map by Anna Burles

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Mash-Up Maps, Unofficial Maps

Storylines

London’s iconic tube map is transformed into a pit-stop journey through classic styles of storytelling, with the individual tube lines turned into genres and sub genres of literature. The depths of the Northern Line are made over into the aptly named Horror Line. The Bakerloo Line coursing past Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street becomes, of course, the Crime & Mystery Line. And the pink trajectory of the Hammersmith & City is converted to the Romance Line. Each Storyline features a range of illustrations bringing to life both classics and mavericks from that theme, with a genre-defining work lurking at each journey’s end. Stations falling on intersecting Storylines get a sub-genre cross over. Many many days and weeks were spent researching and crafting this piece.

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of the whole “let’s use a well known transit map and replace the station names with something else” thing, but I’m going to make an exception for this stunning poster by artist Anna Burles. This is beautifully done, and – for once – the interchanges between the genre/route lines have actually been thought about properly.

Photo: Barcelona Wayfinding

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Not only is this an awesome picture, but it really shows off how the Barcelona Metro map is part of a greater, unified, wayfinding scheme. Here, on one panel, we’ve got a nice big map, information about the Metro, a complete cross-referenced list of stations, and a local area map showing the transportation options around the current station. Wonderful stuff.

Source: albertmiralles/Flickr – link no longer active

Official Map: Brussels Metro, Tram and Rail Network, 2012

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Having touched briefly on the Brussels map with this previous post, I thought it was time to take a proper look at the current official map.

Have we been there? Yes, back in 2003, but I walked pretty much everywhere and didn’t use the Metro/tram system. I did catch trains from Brussels to other cities in Belgium, however.

What we like: The treatment of the Metro part of the system is excellent, with a nice solid 90-degree angle design really accentuating the orbital nature of lines 2 and 6. Strong, yet interesting, choices for the route lines seem to be aimed at maximising contrast between adjacent lines: the lines are paired in colours that are opposite each other on a colour wheel (blue/orange and purple/yellow).

The map still looks nice and clean despite the bilingual French/Dutch labelling required for many stations.

What we don’t like: The map is less impressive when it comes to some of the design choices made for the tram network – the yellow used for line 7 is so pale that it needs to be outlined in grey, which then makes that line look visually too strong. Line 7’s treatment at terminus stations is also inconsistent with all the other lines: its terminus dot sits above the station marker like the others, but its route line lies underneath the station.

An inconsistent approach to naming stations for the tram routes: most of the stations that don’t interact with the Metro system remain nameless, except for a few on the eastern part of Line 7… why are these stations different to the others?

The pastel striped main rail lines take quite a bit of  getting used to: the effect does reduce their importance in the information hierarchy, but it all just looks a little 1980s after a while. 

Our rating: If it was stripped back to show just the Metro, this would be a wonderfully strong map. As it is, each subsequent mode reduces the visual focus of the map and ends up as a slightly unsatisfying final product. Stilll very competently done, however. Three stars.

Source: Official STIB website

Photo: Osaka Subway Map, Area Map and Wayfinding System

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Nice big maps, and clear (but maybe a little dull) directional signage. A full review of that system map looks to be in order in the near future… 

Source: Ian YVR/Flickr

Unofficial Map: Proposed Delhi Metro Expansion Map in the “Hindustan Times”

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Unofficial Maps

I know this just a quick in-house diagram to illustrate the proposed additions to the Delhi Metro system, but does it have to be so incomprehensible and ugly? Type is flying around at almost every possible angle, some lines are geographical, others are diagrammatic… I need a lie down.

Source: tanoy_raj/Flickr

Photo: Paris Metro / French Knot

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Nicely executed embroidery and framing — a fun idea for something to do with those metro maps you picked up while backpacking around Europe!

Source: JessTodd/Flickr

Photo: Brussels Metro Map Changeover, April 2009

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Here’s an interesting pair of photos from 2009 that show two in-car strip maps that co-existed on Metro trains in Brussels. Together, they show the changes in the system that were occurring with the opening of track between the Delacroix and Gare de l’Ouest stations.

Apart from a new look to the map, the system itself seems to have been overhauled completely, with the previous lines “1A” and “1B” becoming “5” and “6”, amongst lots of other changes. Note also the four languages used on the informational stickers: French, Dutch, English and German!

Source: Daniel Sparing/Flickr

Submission: Official Map, Seattle Central Link Light Rail, 2012

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Submitted by Joshua Fan, who says:

This is an official map of Seattle’s Central Link light rail line, which opened in 2009. It appears  in the official guide of all of Sound Transit’s services, which can be found in this PDF on the Sound Transit website. Frankly, I am quite disappointed in this map: it tries to both diagrammatic and geographical, but fails on both counts (which is a common mistake that you have pointed out on several previously-reviewed maps). Between stations, the map attempts to portray a semblance of geography on the line between stations, but the distances are incorrect: for example, the downtown stations at the north end are much farther apart on this map than they are in reality. The depiction of water is even worse: the map shows a lot of details in the shoreline, suggesting that it reflects the actual geography, but however the shape of the shoreline in the map is a really ugly distortion of the reality. I am curious about what you think about it!

Transit Maps says: The problem with this map is that it’s trying way too hard to make Seattle’s single line of light rail look more impressive than it really is. So it (unnecessarily) shows a lot of the twists and turns in the route and some pseudo-geographic coastline, and adds some optimistic information about the time it takes to get between key stations. It’s not the worst map out there, but it’s really pretty dull. Once North Link and East Link get added to the equation, things should start looking a little more exciting.

If I was drawing this map, I’d keep the big turns in the line: the kink eastward through Tukwila which then turns north to Rainier Beach, and the Beacon Hill tunnel: the rest, I’d straighten out completely. The weird kink south of Rainier Beach is totally extraneous on a map like this.

My main problem with the Seattle map will always be the icons used to mark each of the stations. Not only do they reproduce horribly at smaller sizes – like on this printed map – but the rationale behind them is the worst type of retroactive design-speak.

For those who don’t know, the idea is that “points of interest” near the station are plotted as “stars”, and from these stars, “constellations” created as the station icons. Conveniently, the points of interest always seem to fall just where required in order for something relevant to be designed for each station. Some very selective choosing of those “interesting” places, I think.

Here’s a link to a PDF that tells you more about the Constellations for those who are interested.

Photo: On Our Way to Asakusa

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Here’s a dreamy shallow depth of field photo from Tokyo’s Ginza Line. Yum.

Source: Eric Flexyourhead/Flickr