Great photo of a old and weather-worn Tube Map, taken at White City tube station. If you look closely, you can see that more than one layer of map is visible in certain sections, giving sort of an archaeological cross-section of different eras (See the doubled-up interchange station symbols at Euston for a good example). The most visible map seems to date from the early 1970s as it shows the Highbury branch of the Northern […]
Riffing off the Tube Map is not entirely a modern phenomenon, as this Penguin book cover from 1977 shows. (Re)design by John Carrod. Source: coversetc/Flickr
Mesmerising stuff. One dot equals one person’s journey. More details on the project here.
Submitted by Angus, who says: I’ve been working on this map of an integrated rail network for Greater Glasgow of the (imagined) near future for quite some time and now that it’s finally finished I’d love to know what you make of it. Shortly after beginning the project I found your blog and I’ve been regularly trawling through it for inspiration and tips ever since. I started work on the map for three basic reasons. […]
Thanks to Robert McConnell, who let me know that the map I featured in my last post is actually a modern digital map made by none other than Maxwell Roberts. Roberts states that he based his version of the map off one that Beck produced, unsolicited, in 1938 and that a copy of this version is in Ken Garland’s excellent book, “Mr. Beck’s Underground Map”. I own a copy of this book, so was a […]
Here’s something via Chris Applegate on Flickr, where Chris says: Finally put up and framed the gorgeous vintage Tube map I won in a competition yonks ago. It is gorgeous, but it’s not just a Tube map, nor is it anything I’ve ever actually seen before. It appears to be a Greater London Tube Map/main line railway diagram produced in a Beck-like style – a precursor to this 1988 “London Connections” map (May 2013, 3 stars) […]
Question: Which of Beck’s maps of the London Underground do you most prefer, and what properties does it have that elevate it above the others in your opinion as a designer? Answer: My absolute favourite Beck-drawn Tube Map is actually his unpublished 1961 Victoria Line proposal, which I wrote about in this post back in 2012. Go take a look at it – it’s simply gorgeous, with an arrow-straight lavender Victoria Line cutting directly across […]
If you ever wonder just how much the Tube Map is ingrained into British culture, then I think we have the answer here: drawn (and drawn well) by a six year old, complete with National Rail interchange icons. Fantastic! This is my representation of the London Underground map (which I am very interested in) and shows the journey from my house to my Daddy’s work near Waterloo (identified by the star – which is unfortunately […]
Very much in TfL’s house style, even as a more geographical map. Mainly interesting because it’s a major expansion of the Tube south of the Thames, which has historically been underserved by the Underground. If you live in London and want to have say in the routing of this line, then you should go and take TfL’s survey. More information on the project can be found here, where I also sourced this image from.
Not a true map, but what the Railway Clearing House (RCH) called a “Railway Junction Diagram”. Note that while railway lines, stations and junctions are faithfully and accurately depicted, not a single other detail is shown. That’s because these diagrams were created to assist the RCH in its primary task – the equitable apportionment of fares and receipts when trains from one railway company used the track of another. Obviously, if a train from one […]
