This brand new map was sent my way by quite a few people last week, so here it is! If the name “Ilya Birman” sounds familiar, it’s because his map of the Moscow Metro came second in the design competition a few years ago that was eventually won by Art Lebedev Studios. I wrote about Ilya’s entry here at the time.
Now, Ilya and designer Alexander Karavaev have turned their attention to the tram network of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, creating this brand new official map. (And if the name “Chelyabinsk” sounds familiar, that’s because it’s where that giant meteor explosion was caught on dashcam a few years back.)
The map is a very handsome diagrammatic representation of the network with a few design innovations that I haven’t seen before. The most noticeable is the slightly flared, almost trapezoidal marker for stations. They certainly do the job with style, and it’s nice to see something different from the usual London Underground-styled “tick”.
I’m not quite so enamoured with the terminus station route number designations, which seem a little over-designed to me. The faux perspective as the route lines rush “upwards” towards the viewer together with the angle and shiny glow of the route number boxes is just too much. The blurb on the projects website boldly declares that these are “the most beautiful termini symbol(s) in the history of transport infographics”, but I just can’t agree with that. I applaud Ilya and Alex for trying something new and out of the box, but I don’t think it quite comes off.
More successful is the slightly rough and uneven “pencil” treatment of the subsidiary grey bus and trolleybus lines. It looks great, and it’s not too forced or overdone. The subtle pattern in the green parkland areas is also quite nice, and I do love the inclusion of the children’s railway in the main park. The special permit zone for the tram line to the city’s metalworking factory is also deftly handled.
Our rating: A very attractive diagrammatic map with some innovative design features. Some come off, some don’t – but credit is due for pushing the envelope and trying new things! Three-and-a-half stars.
Source: Ilya and Alex’s project website (in Russian; lots of detail images)
A fairly bare-bones map of existing (black) and new (red) rail lines in the Baltic State of Latvia from 1938. It’s mainly interesting because it shows the five different railroad gauges in use at the time. Five! (Which is right up there with Australia’s infamous “gauge muddle”).
Long-time readers of the blog might know that one of my all-time favourite maps is this beautiful two-colour diagram of the Paris Métro from 1956. It’s stylish, beautiful to look at and easy to understand, even with just two printed colours – an elegant combination of blue and gold. (The background could be a cream paper, or it might be just aged and yellowed white paper: it’s hard to tell!) While the scan from the original source is high-resolution, it’s oversharpened and not suitable for anything other than viewing on a screen. So – as is my wont – I decided to redraw it in Adobe Illustrator, making it completely vector-based.
Here’s the end result (click the image for a larger preview). I strove to be as accurate as possible to the original piece, including the way that the blue ink overprints the gold ink. This required setting up a choke mask for the gold halftone tint area behind the blue route lines so that the two colours overlapped ever so slightly, but the gold dots didn’t show through the solid areas of blue. Old-school trapping work is fun!
Drawing the route lines was surprisingly easy, especially with Illustrator’s new Join and Corners tools, which allowed me to lay out straight sections of track, join them with one mouse flick and then visually modify the radius of corner joints until I got a perfect fit. A few graduated curves – which would originally have been made with french curves – had to be drawn manually with the Pen tool. I note that the original map was remarkably consistent with its curved corners, using only a few standard values throughout the whole map.
Typography was more challenging – a combination of perfect matches (Engraver’s Gothic for the Plan de Paris title at top right and the Ligne de Sceaux legend), serendipitous substitutions for the original typeface (with a few tweaks, Proxima Nova Condensed turned out to be very similar indeed to the gothic font used for station labels), and some good, old-fashioned redrawing of the fonts I simply couldn’t match.
The Art Deco-styled Métro label at the top left was simple enough, but the gorgeous script used for the locale names around the periphery of the map was another matter. Almost certainly hand-lettered originally, there wasn’t a modern computer font that even came close to matching its style and aesthetics. This meant laboriously tracing each letterform with the Pen tool: very few letters could be reused in other locations because almost every one was slightly different. It was definitely the most time-consuming part of the recreation, but totally worth it in the end!
The final obstacle to overcome was recreating the halftone dots used on the map – gold for the city limits and blue for the Seine. Creating good looking vector-based halftone dots in Illustrator is surprisingly difficult, with results that either look too digital and perfect, or create an unholy mess of millions of paths and anchor points. In the end, I made use of the Halftone.us Illustrator Tint Pack, a collection of lovely, organic-looking, seamless halftone pattern swatches from 5- to 90-percent grey. As you can see from the image to the left, they look fantastic and are very true to the original printed piece. I took great care to use the same line frequency and dot angle as the original map to complete the match.
Of course, once the map was completed, I could use it as a basis for two further related maps. First, a four-colour version using a contemporaneous map as my colour guide. The scan is low-resolution and a little dark, so there was a bit of guesswork involved, but it looks pretty awesome. Click on the map for a larger preview.
And finally, just for fun, a version of the map that uses the colours from the current official map. As forests and locale names don’t appear on the modern map, I had to come up with something that suited the colour palette myself. Click on the map for a larger preview.
This is a short film made using the QGIS and TimeManager, which presents the development process of rail public transport in Warsaw in the last 107 years.
The animation shows the construction and decommissioning of tram tracks, underground, Warsaw Commuter Railway (WKD) and Fast City Rail (SKM) between 1908 and 2015. Additionally, the map showing a riverbed of the Vistula River and the changing administrative borders of Warsaw.
This film is a result of group project realized during the UNIGIS Krakow study program.
I do love a good timelapse of rail infrastructure! Of particular note is the almost total destruction of the tram network and the city of Warsaw itself in the latter days of WWII and its subsequent rebuilding after the war – although never to the previous levels.
From the late 1970s through to the early 1990s, almost nothing changes at all – but from 1995 onwards, things proceed apace, with the opening of the Warsaw Metro in stages and the introduction of the SKM lines shortly thereafter (the line that disappears after just a year or so of operation interests me!).
A fascinating look at Warsaw’s evolving rail system over the years – nicely done, Jakub and team!
Here’s a sneak peek at a little weekend project… coming along nicely, I must say! I’m particularly pleased with the all-vector halftone dots, which have a lovely organic feeling to them that suit the original source material nicely. More soon!
For some time now, I’ve been busy designing a Madrid transit map, and your blog has been a great help. It’s fantastic to have access to all this information and, first of all, I wanted to thank you for running this blog. Your comments are always helpful.
Latest Madrid Metro maps were, so to speak, not very appropriate and, even without previous experience in map design – I’ve always been a pre-press guy, not a graphic designer – I thought that there should be a better way to do it. So, first as a hobby, and then more seriously, I started working on the issue.
The goal was to include both the Metro and the commuter rail system (called “Cercanías”). These networks are commonly used in conjunction and, actually, travelers have to obtain the information from two different sources, with two maps that have nothing to do with each other. From the beginning, I thought the priority should be digital (web, mobile app), so, instead of a single map with all the information of both networks, I preferred to split it into two “layers”, each one showing one of the networks in foreground with the other in the background as a subtle reference. Inspiration came from that icon in KickMap app for switching day and night service in the NY Metro system, but, instead, use it to switch between Metro and Cercanías layers. This would allow access to the whole system information while reducing the clutter of the map. Given that the map’s priority is digital, there’s no much use in showing the legend on the map itself. Instead, in order to provide an easier access, it will be available separately.
What I’m sending you is the first of these two layers: the Metro map in foreground with commuter rail in the background.
As you can see, it’s a radial grid based map (in my opinion, the best way to explain Madrid), set in steps of 15 degrees, and using only concentric circles and spokes. Amsterdam maps by Erik Hammink and Max Roberts and his circle maps were an inspiration, mostly the latter: some of their maps are great, but I thought Madrid should have a better solution (and include commuter rail system).
The main issue was to solve the line 6, since it forms the main circle. To ensure geographical consistency it could not be a perfect circle, because stations like Príncipe Pío and Argüelles are located in the city center, while others, like Laguna or Lucero, are in the suburbs. So turning the line inward was necessary in order to prevent distortion in the whole map. The river is used to close the gap and improve balance. I think it works quite well.
About type, Helvetica has been historically the Madrid Metro typeface. It is used on maps and all kind of signage and I see no reason to change it. Furthermore, the map being so different to what residents are used to, keeping the typeface seems a good idea to make it more recognizable. So I’ve tried to simply put it to good use: light for stations, bold for transfer stations and terminus. Credit to Vignelli’s NY map.
The circular interchange symbols for long distance transfers are inspired by the Lebedev Studio’s Moscow Metro map: the way complex transfers are resolved is gorgeous, and one thing that caught my attention was that it could be done without adding a new color to the symbol, so black could be reserved exclusively for labels. I have a feeling that it enhances the readability of the map, and I wanted it for my map too.
And it is at this point that I have to thank you again. Your post, in May earlier this year, about “zoomable on-line previews” led me to get to know Leaflet.js, and I’ve had a great time playing with the code (with Google’s aid, of course). I wasn’t happy with that “zoomify sharpening” either, and I have found a Photoshop script that cuts the image tiles without sharpening. It’s called Bramus (https://github.com/bramus/photoshop-google-maps-tile-cutter/) and I figured that you’d be curious about it. It works perfectly for me with Leaflet.
My purpose is to complete the map with the second layer (the one with Cercanías in foreground) but, at this stage of the project, your feedback would be much appreciated.
Transit Maps says:
Wow. Just wow. Everyone, stop what you’re doing and take a look at this right now.
This is superb modern transit map-making, and I love it.
For a self-confessed non-designer, David’s done an absolutely incredible job. Without even seeing his second commuter rail version of the map, I can already see exactly how he’s planned for its inclusion and how neatly everything fits together.
Madrid is a radial city, so David’s design choice is actually appropriate (some other radial maps I’ve seen have seemed a little forced, like Max Roberts’ New York subway map). While he’s distorted the system layout a bit to suit his design, the relative positions of most of the lines seems to be quite accurate: credit to David there!
The design language of the map is remarkably clear and consistent: I especially like the neat way David flips route lines across each other in little “x” configurations when they need to swap sides, and his “long transfer” station symbols are just gorgeous – a nice evolution of the Art Lebedev Moscow Metro interchange symbol, as David himself notes. He’s even done a decent job of making the alternating shaded zone backgrounds attractive, one of the most difficult tasks in transit map design! Often, these zones seem to be slapped on as an afterthought (*cough* London Underground Map!), but it’s obvious that David has taken great care to incorporate them as an integral part of the whole map.
Our rating: Simply outstanding! Four-and-a-half stars until I see the second Cercanías map, when I fully expect to upgrade this to a full five-star rating. To be honest, I think the map is clear enough that both the Metro and Cercanías could be displayed fully on the same map, but I certainly appreciate the way that David is approaching this as an interactive digital-first project.
Source: David’s Madridxpress website (link no longer active)
Submitted by Michael Whalen (amongst others), who says:
I just stumbled upon this map showing all CTA/Metra/SouthShore train connections in Chicago. There’s a lot going on, but I like how its much more diagrammatic than the regular map. I see several things that they’ve done with this map that I know you will hate, but I thought I’d leave it here for your critique anyway.
Transit Maps says:
There may be a few small things about this map that I’m not totally wild about, but I do think it’s both more useful and more attractive than the official CTA “L” map, which has barely changed since I first reviewed it (October 2011, 3 stars).
Integrated rail transit maps are awesome – they’re produced with the end user in mind (showing all available services, regardless of the operating transit agency) and give a much better idea of the full extent of rail options in the area than separately produced maps.
This one does a pretty good job of laying out the complex network in and around Chicago, showing the “L” in its familiar colours, while bringing Metra and South Shore services down in the visual hierarchy by showing them in grey/light brown: effectively implying their less frequent service in a subtle visual way.
Unlike the standard “L” map, this one manages to show The Loop without an inset, although it has to stretch it horizontally quite a lot to do so. I still prefer this approach, because it eliminates the need to look elsewhere on the map for this commonly used information. I also really appreciate the little walking icons for stations that are located close to each other. Despite the apparent length of some of the dotted walking lines on this (not-to-scale) diagram, they’re all within a quarter-mile or two blocks of each other. The differently shaped interchange symbols for the different systems is also a nice little visual cue – an in-system transfer between two icons of the same shape (circle–circle, square–square); an out-of-system transfer between different symbols (circle–square). Immediately obvious and very useful.
What I don’t like mainly falls down to one element, but it’s a big one: the labelling of the branch lines! The type is enormous, clumsy and intrusive, especially when light colours like pink and yellow are keylined in black. This could all be handled with a much more delicate touch, and I’m not even sure why the Metra lines need to have their labels colour-coded in the context of this map. While we’re at it, the South Shore information box and label would look much better shunted down to the empty bottom right of the map, which would give the Metra Electric South Chicago Branch label a lot more room to breathe. The comprehensive station index isn’t especially attractive, but works well enough given the space limitations of the map. What else are you going to do with Lake Michigan?
Our rating: A comprehensive and useful integrated map of rail transit options in Greater Chicago, let down somewhat by some ham-fisted typography for the branch lines. Three-and-a-half stars.
In response to the Guangzhou Metro map (August 2015, 3 stars), I found this one on Wikipedia (by H2NCH2COOH), which pretty much addresses all the problems you outlined on the previous map submitted by ‘Tony’.
Transit Maps says:
It does, indeed! The addition of the rivers and islands of the city add some nice geographical clues to the map, and the APM inset looks much neater in its own little box. As a whole, the diagram is a little less elegant than the official one, with the red Line 5 weaving a little unsteadily across the map and an odd little kink towards the eastern end of Line 8 that could have been avoided with a little effort. The interchange icons are unfortunately very sadly dull and generic..
Our rating: A little bit better, a little bit worse than the real thing. Let’s call it a draw. My dream map for Guangzhou would probably combine some elements from both of these maps. Three stars.
Hi! This is the official map of the Manchester Metrolink, a tramway/light rail system in Northern England. I just thought I’d submit it to you for your opinion on it. This isn’t mine, obviously, but I haven’t been able to find who made it. If that’s something you also know, I’d love to know.
Transit Maps says:
Tracking down who produces official transit maps can be quite tricky. Even if they’re actually made by an external company, they’re often just released under the auspices of the transit agency that commissioned them, with little or no reference to the design/cartography firm anywhere on the map itself. Some design firms have a recognisable “house style” that makes their work a little easier to identify even without a credit line – CHK America here in the US, Netzplan in Australia and Best Impressions in the UK are good examples of this.
That said, I’m not sure who made this particular map, but I sure do like it! Manchester has had this style of map for a while now (see this from 2014), although this version is something of a temporary stop-gap map while the central Market Street station is rebuilt. As a result, the system – which normally has through-running services across the city centre – has been split into two separate parts, with shuttle buses filling in the gap.
What I really like about this map is that it’s very much its own master – it looks unique to Manchester, with very few design nods back towards the almost ubiquitous London Underground tube map (which must always be hanging over designer’s heads in the UK!). The station markers are fantastic – always pointing towards the station name – and the way that they fit modularly into the extra information icons is great. The park-and-ride icons even indicate how many spaces are available for parking, which is awesome information to include.
The narrow shape of the map is interesting, as it definitely compresses the north-south dimensions of the real world system quite a bit. I’m guessing that this is to fit the map into available space in stations or on trains, but can’t be sure. Older versions have definitely been squarer than this, so the change is intriguing.
One thing I do miss from previous versions is the completely circular city centre shading: the rounded polygon used here just looks a little clumsy and awkward in comparison. Hopefully, its inclusion is as temporary as Market Street’s closure is!
Our rating: Another great diagrammatic map with a very distinctive style. Four stars.
I love this official transit map on Guangzhou metro, it’s simple and clean and has just enough detail to not confuse you. Only thing I hate is the interchange station symbol it looks big and bulky when compared to the rest of the map. Your thoughts?
Transit Maps says:
Yes, this is certainly a fine example of a clean, simple diagrammatic transit map. There’s nothing else at all to draw your attention away from the routes, which is quite possibly a good thing with such a dense network as this.
While I do prefer rapid transit maps that have at least some indication of geography – even if it’s as simple as the Tube Map’s inclusion of the Thames to divide London into north and south – I think this particular map shows that you don’t always have to give “above ground” cues to be successful. Those short two- and three-character Chinese names certainly help with the map’s spacious feel – although it does mean that the English-language subtitles underneath each station label are set in comparatively small type.
Unlike Tony, I don’t mind the interchange icons. The double-headed circular arrows visually convey the idea of transferring between lines quite nicely, although I do doubt the device would work if a station ever became an interchange between three or more different lines.
My one minor quibble is that I think the inset that shows the Automated People Mover (APM) in more detail to the top right of the map could be boxed in to make it more obvious that it is actually an inset, not a strange unconnected piece of Metro off in the far distant suburbs!
Our rating: Simple and uncomplicated; a fine example of the Chinese style of Metro map. Three stars.
