Here’s another entry for the MBTA’s map contest, sent to me by Michael Kvrivishvili, a graphic and interactive designer from Moscow. Michael has chosen to show all of the services on his map that the MBTA does on their map – subway, BRT, commuter rail, key bus routes and ferries. He pulls it off pretty well, too, although the convoluted network of bus routes is always going to look a little busy. Like Kerim, Michael’s map […]
While I’m personally not too keen on the MBTA’s map contest, I totally respect the rights of those who still wish to participate. As they’ve told me in conversation, kudos and recognition can be very strong reasons for less experienced or amateur designers to enter. A couple of those designers have sent their entries in to me to review and share with you – this one’s from Kerim Bayer, who also produced this rather striking map […]
Here’s a nice little animated diagram from Fathom Information Design that compares the two polar opposites of transit mapping using Boston’s MBTA rail network as an example. Click through to play around with it, and see the benefits and drawbacks of the two approaches. It’s also super fun to watch the map morph between the two styles. In real life, most transit maps fall somewhere between these two extremes: very few use such a strict […]
daveortega: I love the idea of re-designing Boston’s clunky quasi-decipherable Rapid Transit Map. When I heard that the T was putting together a challenge to re-design the map I seized the opportunity. My enthusiasm cooled once I read the fine-print, but more on that later. I spent the weekend tweaking Bezier curves and aligning dots (so many damn dots), using references like Google maps and subway maps from around the world and came up with […]
So the MBTA is having a friendly little “contest” for people to design a new “T” map, ostensibly in celebration of National Transportation Week. How sweet and fun! Let’s get real here, people. This is speculative (“spec”) work, pure and simple. The MBTA wants to harvest ideas for a future map from entries, but doesn’t want to pay a red cent for them. The winner gets nothing but kudos and the “privilege” of having their […]
My Twitter feed and inbox are both absolutely overflowing with references to this map from the “xkcd’ web comic, so here’s a post about it! xkcd has always been a comic for geeks, and has a long history of awesome map-related work – my favourites include this Lord of the Rings movie narrative map, and the particularly carto-nerdy discussion of map projections – so it’s nice to see the strip’s attention turn to this particular facet […]
Here’s a photo taken in 2011 of a fantastic old and faded sign at the Readville MBTA station in Massachusetts. As the original poster on Flickr points out, trains no longer run from Readville to Attleboro along the Providence/Stoughton Line: trains on that line pass through Readville without stopping. Of course, the fact that the sign refers to the last outbound station as “Attleboro” is an anachronism within an anachronism, as the map shows Providence, Rhode […]
We’ve previously featured Stonebrown Design’s time-scale Boston Subway Map (Aug. 2012, 3.5 stars) – now they’ve produced a map for Boston’s extensive commuter rail network along the same lines. To my mind, this map is even more successful for a couple of reasons: firstly, the time rings are completely concentric, which makes the map easier to read and looks more aesthetically pleasing. It’s interesting to see how fare zones don’t necessarily correspond to the amount […]
Wednesday’s post, Subterranean Veins of Europe, and its discussion of design choices distorting data reminded me of this map/graph sent to me by Barrett Lane last year. At first glance, this is a really neat and cleverly devised concept: the ridership numbers for each station on Boston’s Green Line are presented in the form of a stylised map of the lines, with vertical bars representing those numbers. It looks great, there’s some solid data behind […]
Here’s a fine piece of mid-1970s transit map design, showing Boston’s extensive commuter rail network. Its style is definitely in line with other North American maps of this period, including this one of Philadelphia’s SEPTA system from 1980 – sharp lines and clean typography were the order of the day back then, it seems. Have we been there? I’ve been to Boston, but haven’t used the commuter rail system. What we like: Clean, clear and […]
