Submitted by the author, who says:

So, for a high school art project, I decided to make a system map for the St. Petersburg Metro. I spent about a half-month studying the system and the stations, getting some Russian friends to translate the station names, and prototyping the pipes in Inkscape (didn’t have Illustrator), eventually coming up with this design.

Now that I’m in college and in the process of trying to apply for a second major, I thought that I’d dig up some old projects to pad my portfolio. And, since hindsight is 20/20 (there are no rounded corners, I’m not sure the whole bilingual thing is working out, the lettering gets pretty tight in places, and the only font I could find with Cyrillic support was Roboto) and I now have a copy of Illustrator (and a chance to use that nifty Live Corner feature you blogged about), I was wondering if you could give me tips on how to improve upon the design.

Transit Maps says:

All in all, I think this is a pretty solid effort: nice work! Everything’s laid out nice and clearly and some good thought has gone into the general layout. One thing I would definitely encourage with any future revisions would be to try and make the style of the map a little less “generic”. As I’ve said many times before, the very best transit maps have a sense of place about them – they could only ever belong to the city they represent – but this map carries too many instantly recognisable London Tube Map elements (station ticks. “t-bar” terminus stations and “dumbbell” interchange symbols) to stand as a unique piece of design. 

A few other ideas for improvement: I think that your bilingual labels look fine on the map in most instances, but I question the value of a direct translation to English from Cyrillic. It’s never going to be written like that anywhere in St. Petersburg, and I doubt that most of the names would ever actually be said that way, even if a local was speaking English to you. Most bilingual Russian transit maps choose instead to transliterate the Cyrillic into Roman characters (i.e., it’s still in Russian, but written with English language letters). This at least gives English speakers a chance at pronouncing the name correctly, and you may find it written like that in some places as well. I’ve also seen an alternate Moscow Metro map where the secondary name is written out phonetically, to maximise the probability that English users can both pronounce the name and understand it when it’s announced over a loudspeaker on a train or in a station. Genius!

I think that you really need to put “M<number>” markers at each end of the route lines. At the moment, the Red M1 and the Green M3 lines would appear almost identical to each other for a colour-blind user, and there’s nothing on the map that can be used to tell them apart, except for their colour. Accessibility of your design is hugely important and shouldn’t be overlooked, even for a relatively simple system like this.

Think about how you’re going to show future expansions of the system: the M4 line is going to extend westwards from its current terminus, which could cause problems with your current layout. Similarly, the M5 will expand southwards, but this shouldn’t cause you too many problems. Draw the map with these extensions in place!

I also think you’re missing a couple of railroad termini, upon comparing your map to the official one.

Like I said, this is a solid piece of work, but I think it could be better with a little more work. I admit, it can be difficult to create something that truly represents a city that you don’t reside in, but I’d definitely encourage you – and all amateur map-makers who want to submit to Transit Maps – to push your designs out of your comfort zone to create something amazing. We already know that Tube Map symbology works well enough, but try and find a new and individual approach if you can – and make your maps truly your own!