Absolutely wonderful hand-drawn map of NYC by illustrator Jenni Sparks, second only to Paula Scher’s masterpieces.
(↬ kottke)
This is so gorgeous. Says a lot about the subway’s importance and place in New York’s collective psyche that it’s featured so prominently in the design, cutting vibrant coloured slashes across the landscape. Click through to Jenni’s site to see more of this stunning work.
Brought to my attention by Garrett Smith when he submitted the abomination that is the new official UTA map, here’s a completely different take on Salt Lake City’s rail system from Flickr user H4vok_13. This map is by no means perfect, but it’s an absolute paragon of simplicity and clean design compared to the real thing.
What we like: Streamlined, simplified route lines that expand the city centre and compress the outlying areas work wonders for the clarity of this map. Removing the street addresses from the station names helps a lot, as does the shortening of some of the longer station names.
What we don’t like: I’m not entirely convinced by the use of dashed lines for the FrontRunner routes – dashed lines on a transit map almost always signify a route under construction.
Nor am I a huge fan of the county boundary labels on the FrontRunner lines – a little big and overpowering, and not hugely important for using the system. From what I understand, county boundaries don’t correspond to fare zones on FrontRunner, so why is that information linked so heavily to those routes?
The proposed Sugarhouse Streetcar is perhaps given a little too much emphasis as well: if built, the route will only be about two miles long.
There’s also one very unfortunate error on the map – the service numbers for the Blue and Red lines have been transposed: Blue should be 701 and Red should be 703.
Our rating: Not perfect, but still streets ahead of the official map. Three-and-a-half stars.
Source: H4vok_13/Flickr – link no longer active
Today, the FrontRunner commuter rail system opens for revenue service south of Salt Lake all the way down to Provo, and there’s a new version of the map to reflect this new service. I reviewed a previous version of this map back in July, and I didn’t have much positive to say about it then – and my opinion has not been changed with this new iteration. Quite a few people have submitted this new map to me, and they’ve all been extremely critical of it as well.
Have we been there? Yes, but I haven’t caught any trains.
What we like: To be honest: nothing.
What we don’t like: Almost all the flaws from the previous version of the map remain: the one thing that has improved is the removal of the huge labels explaining the concept of a transfer station. Downtown remains cramped and ugly, while the labelling of stations remains a sloppy, disorganised mess – possibly even worse than before – with some station names now a ridiculously long way from their related station marker (such as North Temple Bridge/Guadalupe).
Speaking of labels, the “FrontRunner” and “FrontRunner South” labels are inexcusably set in completely different fonts: the former in Swiss (a cheap Helvetica clone), the latter in Arial… look at the capital “R” and you’ll see they have completely different shapes.
And why does the South FrontRunner route line extend past Provo when it’s the end of the line?
Our rating: Simply terrible. One submitter of this map, Garrett Smith, sums it up very eloquently, I think:
“You know, it saddens me just a tad bit. Salt Lake City has made such an investment in its rail infrastructure, beginning with the initial 16-mile stretch of the Blue Line between downtown and Sandy in 1999. A mere fourteen years later, we’ve seen the construction of a 90-mile commuter rail line linking the entirety of the urban conglomeration in which Salt Lake lies, as well as massive light rail expansion. To show for it? We’ve got one of the worst transit maps around.”
Another anonymous submitter simply calls this map “embarrassing”… and it is. With the new FrontRunner extension, there was an opportunity for a fresh look at this map, a chance to create something vibrant, modern and attractive that matched the obvious quality of the system itself. Instead, we get this. Half a star.
Source: Official UTA FrontRunner schedule page
Submitted by Sam Gold, who says:
“Taken last week on Line 2 of the Seoul Metro. I found these system maps to be close to unusable!”
Transit Maps says: Hard to disagree with Sam here. You’d need some excellent vision or really good glasses to be able to make out all the detail on this map, which crams all of Seoul’s extensive system into an area often used to show just one line or far simpler systems.
Simple but effective use of an otherwise long and empty space on the station shelter. Could do with a bit of a clean, though.
Source: Sweet One/Flickr
If you’ve got a spare 1500 quid lying around, you could pick up this sweet London Tube coffee table by artist Alex Hammond for Christmas. Limited edition of 50.
See also: MetroTable, a Moscow Metro-themed coffee table.
Source: Alex’s website – link no longer active
(Warning: extremely expensive but incredibly desirable transit-related plaything!)
It’s not often I get to post a video – but this looks simply amazing. Forget the kids, I want this! More info on PlaySomething’s site here (link unfortunately no longer active).
Source: Via @bobbygenalo on Twitter
Definitely more a piece of art using the Moscow Metro as inspiration than an actual usable map, but still noteworthy. Taking the spoke and hub nature of the Metro completely literally, the work shows the stations along each line in the form of concentric rings: simple, but graphically effective. I have no doubt that a seasoned Muscovite Metro commuter would be able to locate the stations they use quite easily.
Source: aircoooled karma/Flickr
