All posts tagged: tube map

Photo – London Underground, Bond Street

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Photography

Note the fantastic station identification here – the roundels containing the station name are perfectly positioned to be visible to riders as the train pulls into the station. Lots of other transit systems could learn from this, not mentioning any names (*cough* BART *cough*)! And the Central Line map on the wall looks big enough to be read from the moon. Source: josericardodavid_o/Flickr

Unofficial Map: London Tube Map as Electrical Circuit Board by Yuri Suzuki

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Unofficial Maps

Created for an exhibition at the London Design Museum, I believe this is also a functional radio as well as a kick-ass representation of the London Underground. The intricate level of detail just has to be seen to be believed. Can I have one? I’ve seen a few comments around the Internet that this piece brings the Tube Map full circle as Harry Beck was an electrical draughtsman who based his design off circuit diagrams. […]

Historical Map: Diagram Showing London’s Underground Railways, Power Stations, Substations, 1933

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Historical Maps

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 […]

Historical Map: Sydney Railway Map, 1939

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Historical Maps, Prints Available

Just how influential was the original Harry Beck London Underground diagram of 1933? Certainly enough for Sydney, Australia to issue this nearly identical vision of its own suburban rail system in 1939, right down to its own version of the London Underground roundel. I’ve never been able to find out whether this map was authorised or licensed from the London Underground, or whether Sydney just thought, “that looks like a good idea, let’s do that!” […]

Historical Map: Harry Beck’s 1961 Victoria Line Tube Map Proposal

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Historical Maps, Unofficial Maps

It seems I’m having a London Underground kind of week… When people ask me what my favourite version of the London Tube Map is, I always show them this. By 1961, Harry Beck was no longer responsible for producing the Tube map, it having been forcibly passed on to Harold Hutchison. However, more out of hope than anything else, he continued to produce new mockups of the map which he passed on to London Transport […]

Historical Map: “Hutchison” London Tube Map, 1960

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Historical Maps

Requested by: My dad (whose love of transit maps I have inherited) The London Tube Map is so synonymous with the name Harry Beck that I feel sure many people think he’s still holed up in a studio somewhere working on the maps even now (he died in 1974). In actuality, Beck’s last published Tube map was released in 1959: in 1960 it was replaced by this new version, ostensibly made by London Transport’s own […]