Submitted by Voystok, who says:

Here’s my fantasy map for the non-existent rapid transit system of Split, Croatia! I made this as a practice project in Illustrator as I’m preparing a portfolio for a college application. The geography is largely distorted and the city lines (M1 and M2) are very disproportionate to the other lines (M3 and M4) which are suburban. I hope one day this city will have a transit system like this.

Transit Maps says:

I like this quite a lot, Voystok, though I feel that it can’t quite decide if it’s ultra-minimalist or something a little more representational of reality. Compared to the straight-line simplicity of the route lines, the zone boundaries seem a little complex and detailed, for example – almost appearing as if they’re the mountains behind the city that hem it to the coast.

So I see two choices: make it more representational, or more minimalist. For the first choice, you might give some indication of the distinctive peninsula that Split sits on, and use the famous old town/palace as a landmark. Make the sea blue! That sort of thing.

To make it more minimalist, you’d simplify things even further. Pare the zones back to an absolute minimum of shapes and extend the darkest Zone 3 grey all the way to the edge of the map. Eliminate the kink in the M2 line and just have it head directly across the loop line, and even up the vertical spacing of that loop a little so that there’s no wasted space.

One more thing to note is consistency in your iconography. Look at how your interchange stations differ depending on whether they’re on a horizontal or vertical section of track. When the M1 Circle interchanges with the M2, both dots straddle the dark blue line… but when the M1 meets the M3 and M4, the dark blue dot sits directly above the dark blue line, with the other dot sitting fully outside the line. It’s a little inconsistent, although I can see why you did it.

One particularly good thing about this is that I can look at an actual map of Split and see how this could work in reality – especially the conversion of mainline trains northwards out of the city to a more metro-like service.

Keep up the good work, this is a very promising start!