Sent in by long-time Transit Maps reader and contributor, @dars_dm, here’s a great old photo of an interactive map kiosk in the Moscow Metro. Push a button, and your route lights up! Apparently, these displays were common at many Metro stations through the early 1970s. Highly reminiscent of the Paris Metro’s plan indicateur lumineux d’itinéraires (or PILI), an example of which I featured previously. Source: PastVu website via @dars_dm
A good example of how something that’s probably perfectly clear to locals can be totally confusing to foreign visitors. The first obstacle is obviously the Cyrillic text, which automatically makes things very tricky for non-natives. Now, I’ve spent quite a bit of time translating and cross-referencing the text here with a Moscow Metro map, and I think I’ve got it worked out — but this isn’t exactly a luxury that you would have when you’re […]
As we reported late last month, the new Art Lebedev Studios Moscow Metro map is now in use around the system and on trains. One thing that the studio has been fantastic at right from the start is documenting the creative process, and they’re not finished yet. Over on their website is a wealth of behind the scenes information that shows how much work has been put into these beautiful maps. The map had to […]
I’ve seen a lot of tweets recently linking to the design process page for Art Lebedev’s new official Moscow Metro map (Transit Maps wrote about this page way back on February 4th). However, I haven’t seen as much attention being paid to the second-place winning map, designed by Ilya Birman. He also has a design process page for his map, and it’s just as fascinating as the Lebedev one. He discusses the difficulty of having […]
As you may have heard by now, the Art Lebedev Studio entry will become the new official Moscow Metro map at the end of February. It beat out the other two entries convincingly, garnering 52% of the popular vote. Of particular interest to me, though, is the design process page for the map on their website: a fascinating look at the hard work and effort that goes into making a world-class transit map. Concepts are […]
Further to my post regarding the unofficial “guerrilla” Moscow Metro map, Twitter correspondent @dars_dm has given me links to the maps produced by the three finalists in the official competition for a new Metro Map. I’ve reproduced them here for your edification. In order, they’re produced by Artemy Lebedev, Ilya Birman and Anton Mizinov and are all very strong in their own way. I’ll confess that I’ve had a huge soft spot for the Lebedev […]
My previous post about the “map bombing” of the Moscow Metro has had a lot of interest, so I thought I’d pass on the fact that the original partizaning.org article about it has been translated properly into English on their site. Well worth a read. And as a bonus, you can download your own PDF of the map, or the Illustrator .ai file and fonts required to edit it yourself.
Last year, the Moscow Metro introduced a completely new official map, which featured 30-degree angles. Put simply, it went down like a lead balloon (link in Russian), forcing the authorities to hastily organise a competition for another brand new design. However, some people decided they didn’t want to enter what’s essentially a no-spec design “contest” (there’s no payment for the winner, just thanks for a job well done) and set about designing their own map independently… […]
Here’s an interesting “map” of Europe’s subway systems that was originally featured in a weekly cultural supplement to Milan’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper. The map looks fantastic, and allows all sorts of comparisons between the underground rail systems of Europe, from cost of tickets (cleverly shown as a blue ring of differing thicknesses: the thicker the ring, the more expensive a ticket is), users per day, total length of each system and even a simple chronological […]
Definitely more a piece of art using the Moscow Metro as inspiration than an actual usable map, but still noteworthy. Taking the spoke and hub nature of the Metro completely literally, the work shows the stations along each line in the form of concentric rings: simple, but graphically effective. I have no doubt that a seasoned Muscovite Metro commuter would be able to locate the stations they use quite easily. Source: aircoooled karma/Flickr
