Not the first Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice of Fire transit map I’ve seen, but definitely the best designed. It was created by Michael Tyznik, who also made this great fantasy map of Columbus (May 2012, 4 stars).

I do detect the influence of my TGV Routes of France map in this work – the general station symbology, the curved routes lines out of King’s Landing and the use of colour coding to define route groups – but Michael has done a fine job of taking things further. His intelligent use of non-standard angles keeps the map nice and compact, but also creates some nice, fun visual shapes. The typeface looks like the superb Source Sans Pro from Adobe, a definite favourite of mine.

(Spoilers below, I guess…)

There is some commentary in the map based on the events of the books and TV series, but it’s limited to some wry notes or labels: “Please pardon our dust as Harrenhal is restored”, or having most of the stations on the Wall Line shown as being closed, for example. The Twins is also divided into “East” and “West” stations with a walking route between then, a very nice touch. One thing the map does really well is to emphasise the importance of the Kingsroad, the main trunk line of the whole transit system, as it were.

Michael has prints for sale for $40 of both this map and another one that shows the entire known world of the series.

Our rating: Great work: the map looks fabulous and it’s full of fun things for fans of the series. Four stars!

Source: Michael’s Behance page. Click through to see lots of yummy details of the maps.