Submitted by Niklas, who says: Hi! I’m a student currently living in Berlin. I’ve always been fascinated by maps and recently I started to design one of my own. I hope you would review it on the blog, and give me some pointers as to where it can improve. I wanted to redesign Berlin’s Transit Map in a different style (or rather my own). The map shows all U-Bahn (Metro), S-Bahn (Urban Rail) and Regional […]
All transit maps should have their own cool launch video! And this one certainly makes the map look very intriguing, with its more geographically faithful and organic layout. The distinctive Hundekopf (dog’s head) shape of the S41/S42 Berlin Ringbahn is certainly very apparent! The larger font size is also quite obvious, even at a distance. The only minor quibble I have about this video is that it calls this map “THE new map”, contrasting that against “the […]
I've long admired this fascinating map of the railway network in and around East Berlin, produced at the tail end of the Cold War in 1989. As is usual, I decided to redraw it in Adobe Illustrator to see what makes it tick.
Found on the band’s official YouTube channel, though I don’t think it’s the song’s actual official music video: that would be this one. The song – from R.E.M.’s last studio album, Collapse Into Now – literally references Berlin and the U-Bahn, but isn’t anything remarkable by the band’s high standards, and the motion graphics are fairly average as well. However, I will give them full credit for using FF Transit – the typeface actually designed […]
Submitted by Robert, who says: 6 Month ago the german railway (DB), section Berlin, ask me to make a map. They saw my works on Wikipedia and gave me the job to create a transit map which help visitors to find the right way form Schönefeld airport to Berlin city. Schönefeld (SXF) is the old East-Berlin airport, which should be closed when the new airport (BER) opens. But since we have a couple of little […]
Question: Hi there! Thanks so much for your comments on my Berlin 1952 redesign. I’m working on a recreation of a Berlin map from 1992 (I can’t include links, but there’s a few from 1992, 1991, and 1988 floating around Google I believe), and I’m wondering what your advice on font is. I can’t really pick it out by eye and WhatTheFont hasn’t been too helpful. What would you say would be the closest one? FF […]
Submitted by cellardoor85, who says: As special educator, I work with a 7 year old boy who has memorised the complete Berlin S-/U-Bahn, bus and tram network. Every day, he draws exactly one section of the network (without any mistakes, of course) and gives it to me as a present. Last month I started to puzzle all the parts together into one big map on the wall of my office. The common project is not finished […]
Submitted by Jesse, who says: Inspired by your re-make of the Paris Metro maps, I went and re-made from scratch this map of Berlin from 1952. I used DIN Pro, which seemed like the closest match. I took a few liberties with some of the colors and symbols here and then, but for the most part I’ve tried to stick to the original as closely as possible. Would love to hear what you think! Transit […]
Here’s a lovely cutaway view of Hermannplatz station, at the intersection of what is now U7 (the lower platform here, running east-west) and U8 (the platform above, running north-south). The map also shows the pedestrian tunnels that connected the station directly with the basement of the monumental Karstadt department store, then one of the largest in the world. However – probably for reasons of clarity – the diagram places the entrance in the first basement […]
Submitted by Arne, who says: It suddenly appeared to me that the Berlin S-Bahn system had the form of Da Vinci’s Man of Vitruvius: a circle (Ringbahn), two arms (Stadtbahn) and a head + legs (Nord-Südtunnel and the southern branches at Yorckstrasse), with Friedrichstrasse as the heart of the network. So I made a map. What do you think? Transit Maps says: Well, that’s certainly a creative and unusual way to interpret the Ringbahn! Of […]
