I’ve tried making comics about my time in New York in the past but I couldn’t articulate the feelings. It’s a strange feeling missing a city, especially when it’s not your home town but I think most people understand the feeling of wanting to belong or feeling like they don’t. Anyways these have been some words.
A nicely poignant little web comic, cleverly using the New York subway map as part of the narrative.
From an HO-scale model railway diorama. The miniature subway map is pretty neat, really.
Source: ShellyS/Flickr
Submitted by the awesome Gnimmel’s House of Maps, who says:
There are a lot of infographics around which are based on the tube map, and a lot which are based on the periodic table. So I decided to combine the two. Here’s a tube map of the periodic table (see also here for more details) and there’s also a periodic table of the tube map.
Transit Maps says:
Science combined with a tube map equals a win in my book! It’s been a long time since high school chemistry for me, but this diagram seems to make pretty good sense, with the “fare zones” and “route lines” accurately depicting the different properties (groups, blocks, periods, etc.) of the periodic table. I especially like the “ River Thames”, which separates gases, liquids and solids – with liquids being “stations” placed in the river. This leads to Mercury – a metal that’s also a liquid at room temperature – getting its own little “lake”, a nice touch indeed.
Our Rating: Pretty darn awesome! Four stars.
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Submitted by just about the entire population of Toronto, I think.
Created by Spacing’s Matthew Blackett in a collaboration with designer Jamie Hodgson, this subway-style map attempts to present a brief history of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.
Now, as an Australian, I’ll fully admit that my knowledge of ice hockey is a little thin, and I know even less about the Maple Leafs franchise. For me, ice hockey is that one question hiding in the Trivial Pursuit card deck that I have absolutely no idea about… my answer is always, “uhhh…. Wayne Gretzky?” However, this map is well-designed enough that I can piece together the important stuff… especially that the team was once highly successful and now seems to have fallen on harder times. The note regarding the indefinite delay of the construction of the Stanley Cup Line speaks volumes about the team’s long-suffering fans.
What I really like about this map is that the thematic lines are linked when appropriate. A player was a captain and a Hall of Famer? Stops on both lines! There are plenty of other thematic maps out there that just drop names at random onto something that may (or may not) resemble an actual subway map and call it a day, so it’s nice to see some proper thought being put into this one.
Source: Spacing Toronto – link no longer active
Just when I thought I’d seen every possible variation on things designed “in the style of a subway/tube map”, along comes something to prove me completely wrong. This isn’t the latest Metro system – it’s a pizza delivery map.
Have we been there? I believe I stopped in Tunbridge Wells very briefly to get some photos developed and have some lunch on my way from Hastings to London, all the way back in 1997.
What we like: Actually packed full of very useful information:the suburbs and towns around the pizza store, the roads used to get there (using the classic UK system of “A”, “B” and minor roads), the delivery charges incurred – depicted in a way akin to the modern Tube map’s Zones – and even the location of petrol stations for the delivery driver. And the legend at the bottom ties the whole thing together nicely, offering an alternative method of looking information up.
As Lee Vidal, the map’s designer says, “[the map] is designed to be a handy guide for both customers and delivery drivers like myself.”
What we don’t like: The delivery fee zones are a little distracting, due to the contorted shapes they have to make to fit around the suburbs and cities.
The colours used for roads could be a little more visually appealing, although something in the back of my head is telling me that these colours are the same as those used in UK road atlases to show road classes – can anyone confirm this for me?
Finally, the location “ticks” on the grey minor roads are a little bit long for my liking, looking more like branches of the road than a stop along the way.
Our rating: Imaginative, creative, attractive and useful. Four stars!
Source: Designed by Lee Vidal/Flickr
Super cute stocking stuffer idea from the people at Spacing.ca – magnets that you can arrange to form your own utopian transit system on the door of your fridge. It’s gotta be better than those do it yourself modern poetry magnets…
Submitted by David Daglish, who says:
Rio De Janeiro’s metro system has only two lines, both cover the same stations through the business district to the tourist areas of the Zona Sul. The transit map also shows “metro bus” connections that don’t quite make geographic sense.
Transit Maps says:
A “straightened” linear version of the full Metro map (reviewed here, 2 stars), which enhances the legibility considerably. Strangely, this version also has information about weekend services that the full map completely lacks. However, the directional arrows between each and every station has to be one of the most ridiculously redundant pieces of design I’ve ever seen.
This photo, shared by Flickr user IsarSteve, shows an absolutely amazing discovery. Construction work at the Knightsbridge Underground station in 1996 uncovered this stunning 1949 quad royal* poster of the Tube map. It looks as if the workers know they’ve found something wonderful as well, judging by the yellow and black warning tape surrounding the frame.
For many, the 1949 tube map is the apotheosis of the Beck style, with his ruthless quest for simplification and order at its height. The Central Line blazes a red, totally horizontal path across the middle of the map, and as much else as possible is reduced to horizontal or vertical lines only; diagonal lines are only used where absolutely necessary. This does present one small problem in that Kew Gardens and Richmond stations on the far southwestern branch of the District Line are nowhere near the Thames, as they are in real life.
*Quad royal simply refers to the paper size, being the same size as four sheets of Royal paper, or 50 inches wide by 40 inches deep.
Source: IsarSteve/Flickr
Here’s an interesting in-car strip map from Rome. Firstly, the eye-searing orange background breaks away from the norm of plain white backgrounds: no one could ever say that they couldn’t find the map!
Secondly, and perhaps more unusually, the map actually shows whether stations have side platforms or island platforms — very handy for knowing which side of the train to get off!
Source: Ka Lung1/Flickr
Here’s a beautiful map of the Moscow Metro from 1980 that’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s an official map, as it looks quite different to other Moscow maps of the same vintage. The archive I found the map in also lists it as “Source Unknown”. It appears to have been printed on the flyleaf of a pocket-sized book, bound to the book’s front cover on the left half, with the fold just to the right of the vertical Orange Line of the map.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: One of the most unique-looking transit maps I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a map of the solar system, with Jupiter-sized interchange stations within the orbit of the Ring Line, smaller satellites (outlying stations) trailing along in their wake. Despite the unusual form, and the renowned complexity of the Moscow system, this still has a nice sense of clarity, simplicity and order to it – this map is still very usable.
What we don’t like: Some absolutely terrible registration on the printing (which appears to be all spot colours – nine different colours in total!). Some fairly crude-looking linework, which may be poor draftsmanship or the result of the printing.
Our rating: Totally unique, but still a very usable map. Four stars.
Click here for another abstract Moscow Metro map.
Source: Lebedev Studio’s historical archives of Moscow Metro maps
