All posts tagged: Europe

Official Map: Reykjavik Excursions Bus Network, 2015

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Official Maps

Fast forward ten years from yesterday’s excellent diagrammatic map of bus services in Iceland, and we’re now left with this sad thing. There are far fewer routes, although I’m not sure if that’s because service has been reduced or the map is only showing the routes of one company.  The geographically-accurate shape of Iceland sits uneasily with the crudely straightened route lines: this map has none of the elegance of the earlier version. On a […]

Advertisement: “Double Diamond” Beer Featuring the London Tube Map (c. late 1970s?)

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Advertising

More proof of just how ingrained the Tube Map is in the English psyche is evident in this billboard advertisement for Double Diamond beer – inserted as the punchline in the long-running “Only here for the beer!” campaign.  The ad campaign itself is almost as much as part of England as the Tube Map; the tag line has entered into the vernacular, much like “Where’s the beef?” in the U.S., and “Not happy, Jan!” in […]

Photo: FC Barcelona “Subway Map” at the Barca Museum

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Popular Culture

Welcome to FCB Island! Or something like that… I’d love to have listened in on the design brief for this project: Make it an island!  Yeah, an island that looks like our crest! With lots of subway lines going everywhere and converging at the stadium! But none of them will go to the airport! Ha ha! Hilarious! I know, make the subway lines spell out “FCB” in the middle!!! Great! And it’s gotta have ALL the […]

Submission – Video: 24 Hours of Public Transportation in Budapest, 2012

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Visualizations

Submitted by scnartup, who says: Similar stuff to the video of a day in the life of London’s Underground in Budapest. Metro line M4 is not shown since it opened in 2014 and the video was made in 2012. One dot represents one vehicle [as opposed to the London video, where 1 dot represents a single rider – CAM]. Legend: white dot: night bus blue dot: bus red dot: trolley bus yellow dot: tram bigger dots: metro […]

Submission – Future Map: Rapid Transit in Helsinki, 2020

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Future Maps, Official Maps

Submitted by Mikko, who says: Helsinki Regional Transport Authority’s (HSL) draft map of rapid transit and trunk bus lines, published for comments on 16 February 2015. There are multiple errors and readability problems with this version, e.g. the commuter train designation letters are too small to be read, some Swedish-language names are wrong etc. Some notes: names of stations and stops are in Finnish and Swedish (officially bilingual country) the so-called Ring Rail Line (Kehärata) […]

Submission – A Heart-shaped Map for Helsinki’s New Airport Rail Loop

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Official Maps

Submitted by Augustin, who says: A new ring rail line is soon to be opened in Helsinki, thus providing a convenient way to reach the airport from city centre (only bus services are available as of now). HSL, the local transportation authority, advertises this huge change with a lovely heart shaped map of the ring, conveniently showing all the stops the trains will potentially call at, although the actual stopping pattern on the line has […]

Photo: Layer Upon Layer of Tube Map, 2008

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Historical Maps

Great photo of a old and weather-worn Tube Map, taken at White City tube station. If you look closely, you can see that more than one layer of map is visible in certain sections, giving sort of an archaeological cross-section of different eras (See the doubled-up interchange station symbols at Euston for a good example). The most visible map seems to date from the early 1970s as it shows the Highbury branch of the Northern […]

Submission – Historical Map: Trams and Buses of Brussels, Belgium, 1958

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Historical Maps

Submitted by Thierry. A very stylish diagrammatic map of tramways (coloured lines) and bus routes (dotted black lines). This city’s historic centre is shaded grey, while the site of Expo 58 (or the Brussels World’s Fair) is given much prominence to the top left of the map. There’s a lovely economy of line in this map: everything serves a purpose and there’s a definite minimalist clarity in the design. Quite lovely.