This is kind of a tangent to my normal tutorials, but I had a surprising number of requests for this after I published my McKinney Avenue Trolley map, so here goes! The first thing to note is that this is not a 100-percent accurate representation of the interchange: this trolley map is not intended to be a road map or to be used to navigate freeways. I want to communicate the idea of an interchange […]
When Adobe Illustrator finally introduced “Live Corners” in January of this year, I was overjoyed. They’d taken one of the most time-consuming and tedious tasks in transit mapping – generating properly nested sets of rounded corners where route lines changed direction – and turned it into something intuitive, quick and 100-percent accurate every time. However, it didn’t solve every problem. Joining two separate paths into one (so that Live Corners could be applied to the […]
Got a message in my inbox from ssjmaz, who says: I’m new to working with Illustrator. While working with 45 degree angles and Snap to Grid on I have a hard time getting my lines (routes) to align properly, there is always a part of them that intersects with the neighbouring line. Back when I first started making transit maps, I had this exact same problem. I’d make my grid, turn on Snap to Grid […]
Graphic Fix: Change Background Color of Text Box in Illustrator Problem: My Kentucky Ave label overlaps with objects below it, resulting in a cluttered appearance. Turns out, there is a super easy fix for something like this! Create the Area Text (text box). Select the Area Text with the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow). In the Appearance panel select desired background fill color and adjust Transparency to your heart’s content. Your labels should now look […]
Imagine this scenario: you’ve been working for months on a complex transit map – lots of interchanges and routes – for a big-city transit agency and you’re presenting it to their management team for approval. They love it, except they’d like the circular interchange markers you’ve used to be square with rounded edges instead. And they’d like to see the revised version in an hour. If you’ve used standard Illustrator artwork for each of your […]
Today’s tutorial comes from an anonymous question that I received in my inbox, which asked: I design a bus transit map using a street layer. But how can i align correctly multiple lines on a street without overlap? This is a great question. You’d be amazed how often I see people attempting to draw multiple parallel route lines manually, which is absolutely the most difficult way of doing things. You might be able to get away with it on […]
Here’s the last of my tutorials regarding station label placement – what to do when route lines intersect each other. There are three standard ways that orthogonal route lines can cross each other, each illustrated below. Horizontal and Vertical Lines: The simplest intersection to deal with. Simply keep the same distance from the side and top/bottom of your label for consistent results. Vertical Line Intersecting an Angled Line (or a Horizontal Line/Angled Line): This one’s […]
While it’s true that I don’t really like the use of station labels that are angled – being very much in the Erik Spiekermann camp that believes horizontal labels aid comprehension and create a cleaner looking map – I do realise that there are times when their use is necessary. If you do use angled labels, then I strongly advise that you keep the number of angles used to the absolute minimum required – type […]
Following on from last week’s tutorial, here’s how to use the Core Type Area to make your station labels align perfectly and consistently when you’re applying them to 45-degree angled route lines. If you use the edges of the Core Type Area when you’re aligning labels to horizontal and vertical route lines, then it should make perfect sense that you use the corners of it when you’re labelling angled stations. The first GIF shows the […]
A lot of transit maps that I’ve seen and reviewed on this blog are badly let down by their labelling. Sometimes it seems that the labels have been applied without much forethought or planning, or just slapped on at the end and placed wherever they will fit. But labels are arguably one of the most important parts of a transit map: it should always be immediately apparent which station marker a label belongs to, and […]
