Submitted by Bernie, who says:
It’s been a while! I’m wondering whether you would be interested in taking a look at a diagram I have completed recently, showing all railway lines (except local or in-park people movers, such as the Disneyland monorail) around the Tokyo conurbation. I welcome any and all feedback!
Transit Maps says:
What an undertaking, Bernie! Mapping Tokyo’s subway lines alone is a huge challenge, let alone every darn rail in the whole metropolitan area, so I applaud the effort involved. The resulting map isn’t exactly compact (the PDF Bernie sent me is around 107 by 75 inches – even bigger than my own monstrous Highways of the United States of America map) but that’s probably beside the point. This is a map that’s best savoured in its digital form, zooming in and scrolling around to uncover all the details.
Stylistically, the map puts me in mind of both Zero per Zero and Jug Cerovic, but it’s also very much in line with Bernie’s earlier work as well. I think the piece holds together really well, with a lot of sweeping curves and concentric rings, though perhaps the outer parts of the map seem a little empty in comparison to the dense centre. Bernie’s goal was to unify all the disparate rail networks with a common design language, and I think he’s succeeded for the most part. Information about Toyko 2020 venues and soon-to-be-opened stations is also most welcome.
For me, where the piece really shines is in the insets to the right of the map, which present a wealth of additional information and insights about the network. A comprehensive overview of services to Narita Airport, a guide to through-running services, and a rather wonderful little map of Shinkansen services that would be a worthy stand-alone map. So much information packed into such a small space!
Our final word: It would make an enormous and unwieldy poster or printed map, but it’s wonderful to look at on a large monitor. This is a huge undertaking and obviously a labour of love, and that’s to be applauded. Four stars! You should definitely head over to Bernie’s project page to read more about his process and design decisions.
Source: Bernie’s Behance project page
Thanks so much for the feedback, Cameron! It is much appreciated. Indeed, the map is huge and wouldn’t work as well in print. I could have scrunched up a lot of the areas in the periphery to make it a more compact map (similar to what Suica did for their Suica Card coverage diagram and what JR did with their diagram), but that would have looked pretty crappy – the lines in the periphery end up having several completely imaginery S-bends, so I went with the current design. Thanks again!
Bernie – fantastic work! Can you send me a pdf to andrew@projectmapping.co.uk for inclusion on web site.
Mr. Ng, this looks great. Could you please send me the PDF? This would be for personal use only. Also, neither this article nor the one at your linked project page mentions how many MB the PDF is. I’m sure everyone interested wants to know. spammygreg [at] gmail [dot] com.
I have Affinity Publisher (Mac version) and would be happy to try to export to a pdf with no errors if you’d like to send me the Affinity file. Honestly, though, maybe someone else has a more complete software combination than me and could better export to PDF. I would, of course, only send the resultant PDF back to you and would not share your Affinity file without your permission.
Is there a way to get the high res version here? Even at “full screen” resolution, it’s too small to make out any of the station names.