I must admit that when Ramin sent me a link to his Behance project page for this map a while ago, I assumed it was a (very accomplished) unofficial project. It was only when I followed the website link at the bottom of the sheet that I realised that this was actually the new official map for the Baku Metro. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the previous lacklustre version (second image above) and looks […]
Submitted by David, who says: This all started about 17 years ago as an exercise to teach myself to use Macromedia Freehand. The years passed, Freehand became Adobe Illustrator, and I continued to work on it. The original Idea was to create an A4 sized map to carry around in my pocket, but it quickly became apparent that to contain the desired detail and remain legible it would have to be printed at A1 or […]
If you ever do a Google image search for the map of the Minsk Metro, you’ll quickly find out that there are a lot of dreary, hackneyed and downright terrible versions of it – both official and unofficial. Despite the simplicity of its X-shaped two-line system (with a third in the works), it just doesn’t seem to inspire good design work. Until now. Ilya Birman – whom Transit Maps has featured a number of times […]
Not a “traditional” transit map, but it does show an important transportation network in a simplified strip map form, so that’s good enough for me! This absolutely gorgeous two-colour map straightens out all the kinks in the eponymous canal, presenting it as a dead straight line from one end to the other. The variable scale is indicated by the mile markers on either side of the map: the less interesting parts of the canal get […]
Submitted by Ray, who says: Here’s Best Impressions’ new tourist bus map for encouraging people to get out and about to explore Yorkshire using the Transdev bus network. The map is intended to highlight the richness of attractions and destinations in a pictorial style. It’s included in our our “Amazing Days in Yorkshire” leaflet, just released. Transit Maps says: While I don’t want to get in the habit of acting as a PR agent for […]
Sent my way by Kyril Negoda are these two rather delightful little diagrams of trolleybus and tram services in Kaliningrad in 1990. This was just before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, so Kaliningrad Oblast was still physically connected to the rest of the USSR, rather than being an exclave like it is today. Stylistically, the diagrams are very similar and have a pleasant, slightly childlike feeling to them. This is aided by […]
Submitted by Mikko. This is a really lovely little diagram, which treads the fine line between simplifying the network and depicting Helsinki’s complex geography very deftly. Near-future extensions (up to 2023) are depicted with hollow route lines and estimated opening dates for stations and new track. One thing it does lack is a legend – while most of the map is pretty self-explanatory, an indication that Line 5 and the short 6T extension only run […]
Sent my way by quite a few people, here’s yet another gorgeous transportation map from Art Lebedev Studios. It bears a lot of their usual trademarks –interesting and unusual station ticks, gradients between line colours at interchange stations, superb point-of-interest icons – but it also brings a playfulness that I haven’t really seen before in their work. The route lines have a very pleasant organic flow to them, and there are some very nice “flavour” icons […]
Passers-by looking at a pre-H.C. Beck Underground map outside Strand station in 1937. At a glance, it looks like the Fred Stingemore map, but expanded to show the whole system (the pocket card only showed central London). Parkland also seems to have been added – the large dark blotches dotted all around the map. Source: Londonist.com
Submitted by thesandpeople100, who says: Cutaway diagram of the Paris Metro’s Opera station. I came across this working on a project for a hypothetical addition to Palais Garnier but couldn’t find any information on its origin. Any ideas? Transit Maps says: A reverse image search on Google found the answer to this pretty quickly: this beautiful cutaway appeared in the July 1910 issue of Popular Mechanics. Unfortunately, this month isn’t available in Google Books’ archive of […]
