Directly related to yesterday’s post, here’s an even older map of the Washington, DC Metro – this one is from an informational pamphlet released for the March 29, 1976 opening of the first part of the system, and is clearly dated at he bottom right. Inexplicably, the Red Line is a dark burgundy colour, while the Orange Line is shown as red, even though they’re both clearly labelled correctly in the legend. How a printing […]
As you may know, I’ve had a lot to say about recent iterations of the Washington, DC Metro Map (Rush+ map review, draft Silver Line map review), but how about a look at where it all began? This is a Metro map from March, 1977 – about a year after the system first started carrying passengers. At first glance, it looks very similar to today’s modern map… but then you realise that the only section […]
Long time readers will be aware of my low opinion of the Washington DC Metro Rail map – here’s a fairly scathing review of the “Rush+” map (March 2012, 2.5 stars) to refresh your memory. It looks like WMATA is preparing for the opening of the Silver Line and has put a draft version of a new map up for comments. According to the blurb there, the route lines are now thinner and station names […]
If you’re going to use icons for each of your stations, as Mexico City does, then why not make them nice and big and simply arrange them in the correct order? More from Wikipedia on the iconography of the Mexico City Metro: Each station is identified by a minimalist logo related to the name of the station or the area around it. This is because, at the time of the first line’s opening, the illiteracy […]
Many thanks to Matt Johnson for telling me about this amazing photoset on Flickr that details the process involved in printing the new Rush+ station maps for Washington, DC’s Metro system. Click through to see the whole set! Even as an experienced graphic designer, I was amazed to see that the maps are screen printed — each colour on the map is printed one after the other, each using a separate screen with its own […]
This is it. My final take on a redesigned Washington, D.C. Metro Map. This is my third major revision of a project that began in February of last year, and won the People’s Choice Award in the Greater Greater Washington “Redesign the Metro Map” contest earlier this year. I’ve taken time away from this diagram to work on a few other projects recently, but the release of Lance Wyman’s draft diagram has inspired me to […]
Recently, I entered a friendly contest organised by the Greater Greater Washington website to redesign the Washington, DC Metrorail map. With the recent appointment of the original designer, Lance Wyman, to renew the real map, there’s a lot of interest in this subject at the moment. I had already done a lot of the hard work with my previous redesign, although a few of the contest’s new requirements definitely necessitated a lot of rethinking. Overall, […]
