Reader Question: I dabble a bit in designing fictional transit maps,but I’ve always wondered about these two questions (if I may). 1) What is a standard and/or good canvas size when drawing a map? 2) When drawing a map where you want to indicate multimodality, but give priority to one mode (say, a metro map showing light rail or commuter connections), how is that best achieved? Is it preferable to use icons at stations or a light silhouette of the lines (or both, or neither)?

Answers: 1) There’s no standard size, per se, but some good starting points would be a square, a 3:2 ratio (e.g., 36″ wide x 24″ deep), or a 4:3 ratio (e.g., 36″ wide by 27″ deep). If you use the metric system, setting your artwork up to conform to the standard “A-series” paper ratio of 1.414:1 could be a good thing as well, as it would allow you to scale your artwork up or down easily to any “A” paper size (yet another reason why metric makes more sense than Imperial measurements).

2) You’ll often hear me talk about “informational hierarchy” in a transit map. This is exactly what I’m talking about – giving the most important part of the map the strongest visual treatment, then placing the other elements in a descending order of visual importance under that. How that is achieved is up to each designer, but usual methods include thinner route lines and more subdued colours. My best advice is to look at other multimodal maps and see what they do. One of my favourites is this fantastic map of greater Paris. In the example you quote, icons work best if you simply want to indicate that an interchange to another mode can be made, while route lines are better if you think that map users need to see where that alternate mode can actually take them.