A nice and friendly-looking schematic bus map from the city of Sundsvall in Västernorrland County, Sweden. The filename of the map’s PDF actually refers to it as a tunnelbanekarta – basically, (in the style of) a subway map – which has led to the map being posted to reddit in the belief that it’s an actual subway/metro map of the city. I would have thought the giant “BUSS NAVET” (bus hub) circle in the centre of the map might have given a clue to the true nature of the map, but whatever…

Despite the schematic look of the map, it actually corresponds quite well with the geographical lay of the land in real life, and the large destination labels would definitely let locals know where each bus was going. One could argue that the inclusion of the distinctive coastline around the city could add some more location cues, but I’m really enjoying the clean simplicity of this map. The fat, brightly coloured route lines are nicely complemented by some chunky, friendly typography (Adrian Frutiger’s Avenir Next), and the whole effect is very pleasant and welcoming. The northeast part of the map is perhaps a little too complex and crowded compared to the rest of the map – the section where lines 1 and 5 share stops seems particularly cramped – but it’s not too bad overall.

I am a little perplexed by the apple icon at the Mittuniversitetet stop: I don’t know what it represents (it’s not the official university logo), and it’s also clearly the Apple, Inc. logo with the left side copied and flipped to the right to remove the distinctive “bite”. The artwork viewed in Illustrator makes this even more obvious, as the icon is made up of two separate halves that haven’t been merged together.

Our rating: Chunky, colourful and friendly. I like it! Three-and-a-half stars.

Source: DinTur.se website – link no longer active