All posts tagged: Japan

Photo: Turn on the Bright Lights…

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Photography

Still in Tokyo, but can I just say how much I adore this wayfinding system? Bright and attractive floor-to-ceiling illuminated signs with simple, easy-to-understand iconography and impossible to miss directional arrows (note how they’re located above head height, so they’re always visible, even in a crowd). And there’s a nice big locality map, too! Stuff like this makes a transit system fun and pleasant to use, but its worth often seems to be underestimated. Source: […]

Historical Map: Tokyo by Richard Saul Wurman, 1984

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Historical Maps

Thanks to Chris Helenius for bringing this amazing map by Richard Saul Wurman (founder of the TED Conference amongst other things) to my attention. In the course of research for this post, I also discovered that Mr. Wurman was responsible for these beautiful maps of Philadelphia from the book Man-Made Philadelphia: still the most-visited post on Transit Maps by far. But onto the map itself. Firstly, this is not a map of the Tokyo subway, as […]

Historical Map: Tokyo Railway Map (English), 1959

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Historical Maps

This is not a map of Tokyo’s subway system, but main line trains. The subway lines are the blue crossed lines contained mostly within the circle of routes at the center right of the map. Just 14 years after World War II’s conclusion, the sheer amount of tracks in just the Tokyo/Yokohama area is astounding. Not the greatest cartography ever, however: the map is a bit of a mess. Source: Rob Ketcherside/Flickr