The distortion of Manhattan on NYC subway maps over the years, expressed as a height-to-width ratio. Fascinating stuff from a New York Times article in 2010 enumerating the changes in the latest version of the map.
Here’s a fascinating reworking of Harry Beck’s original 1933 Tube map that I haven’t seen before. Apparently it’s from an article in a journal from November 1933 that details the work required to upgrade the electrical services on the Underground. Apart from the stark black and white treatment and addition of the power stations and substations, what’s really interesting about this map are the little tweaks and changes that have already occurred since the first […]
A fantastic old in-car map from London’s old Metropolitan Railway: the world’s first underground railway and the precursor to the modern London Underground. Today, former Metropolitan Railway tracks and stations are used by the London Underground’s Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines. I’m guessing this map is from around 1930 or so, as the Railway’s lines are substantially complete apart from the Stanmore extension out of Wembley Park, which opened in […]
Looks like an in-car map from the early 1990s (see the “under construction, 1993” notice at the bottom left for Roosevelt station). Source: Rob Elliott/Flickr
So every man and his dog is sending me links to the new Toronto TTC/Mario World mash-up map by Dave Delisle (prints for sale here). It’s definitely well executed, but I couldn’t help but think I’d seen something similar before… A couple of minutes of Googling later: a similarly-themed (although aesthetically a little different) map of the Boston MBTA done last year by Adam Summerville (prints here). I’d just like to make it clear that […]
One of the things I love about running this blog is when amateur map designers send me their work for review. The quality of these maps is often amazing, and this one of Istanbul’s rapid transit network by Istanbul native Kerim Bayer is a fantastic example. Design- and quality-wise, it far surpasses the official map (shown above for comparative purposes), which is a bit of a shambles: weird angles, muddy colours, poorly drawn and a […]
Matt Johnson sends these photos of great ads that use a subway map theme that he saw in the Montreal Metro on a recent trip. The interesting thing here is that these aren’t created by an ad agency riffing off the subway map theme, but are produced by the transit agency (the Société de transport de Montréal or STM) themselves, as informational ads regarding public transport and upcoming popular events. The ads have a nice […]
Great old map of Boston’s extensive commuter rail network. I really like the way the subway lines are included to give scale to the whole network, and I especially like the square that the main interchange stations on the subway lines make — an understated design choice that gives a nice central focal point to the map. I suspect that the odd colours of the Orange and Red Lines are due to aging ink discolouration […]
Here’s a map that’s going to be seen a lot by tourists over the next few years as Rio de Janeiro hosts both the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. Will it stand up to such international scrutiny and join other transit maps as a definitive icon of its city? Probably not. Have we been there? No. What we like: Suitably bright and exotic Brazilian colour scheme. Relatively clean and simple design. What we […]
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 […]
