The London Transport Museum appear to have an interesting talk on Wednesday 20th June as part of their “Mind the Map” Exhibition season – a talk looking at the legacy of Beck’s iconic Tube map from several perspectives. Details can be found below, for those who may be interested (this author already has his ticket).
Join senior curator Claire Dobbin, writer Mark Ovenden and psychologist Maxwell Roberts for three different perspectives on the design and legacy of Harry Beck’s diagrammatic Tube map. From a speculative proposal to London Underground in 1931, Beck’s now iconic design has come to represent a major breakthrough in transport mapping and communication graphics.
Tickets £10.00 (£8.00 concessions) includes entry to the event plus a free visit to the Museum within one month. Museum annual ticket holders £8.00 (£6.00 concessions)
Booking information can be found here.
http://www.inat.fr/metro/london/
A new London rail map from Belgrade-born, Paris-based architect Jug Cerović showing the Tube, the entire London rail network, and river boat services. He has also created maps in the same style for a number of other major cities around the World.
I like it, it’s more soothing on the eye and actually give a better idea of the services that run on the DLR, Overground and national rail…
Yabut – it’s a bit creative with the routing that the diverted Thameslinks are taking through the core to avoid London Bridge.
I guess they’ve taken a cue from SouthEastern’s recent map, and added in a whole new line that no-one noticed being built.
@ Southern Heights – yes I like it too for much the same reasons esp National Rail network south of the Thames. I don’t expect it to be perfect – certainly isn’t on the mock up showing CR1. It also deals with a number of long standing “woes” as expressed by many people on this blog.
MT & SHLR
Is there an easily-printable copy of than map, other than me fiddling with the link supplied?
The map on that link can be saved as a PDF and printed. The print-out is surprisingly good, in that the pastel colours of the NR lines come through well.
Having myself designed several versions of the network map over many years, but not good enough to publish, I find this one easily the best one to date. There are a few minor route errors here and there, (easily corrected) but for the scale of the task, this is incredibly well resolved and a masterful piece of design. The equal treatment of the BML split between Croydon and Clapham/New Cross Gate, set between the straight diagonals of the Orpington and Surbiton mainlines gives South London much needed order.
It’s also the time I have seen travel options from the Gipsey Hill and Norbury loops clearly set out on a London-wide map. I’m sure this sort of thing would encourage more people to use the network as a network, especially in the context of any TFL takeover of more franchises.
I suspect that TFL and the TOCs would not want to adopt it, if only because it’s the wrong shape for the poster holders, but I think that the north could be slightly compressed and east and west expanded outwards without spoiling the elegance of the design. Conversely, the author has this as part of a set of similarly formatted maps the world over.
I like the daring way in which geography is tweaked for the sake of clean lines where it doesn’t matter – for instance the West London line crossing the District between Barons Court and Hammersmith. Unfortunately, there are cases of station names cutting over adjoining lines, but these could be be resolved with a little more east-west lebensraum. There are also some inconsistencies with the use of interchange connector symbols (e.g. why at Peckham Rye and not Denmark Hill?) but the map gets a 9.5/10 from me.
Finally, good for having letter designations for the lines; perhaps it could be expanded by having the LU lines in white on coloured circles, and the NR lines in black on pastel squares.
I too, like this map.
One small point, the DLR (light green – south from Stratford via Bow Church & Poplar) is shown as terminating at both Lewisham and Canary Wharf, but the light green line itself finishes at Canary Wharf.
@NickBXN, 13 December 2015 at 12:14
“The map on that link can be saved as a PDF and printed”
.png format actually but good resolution at 4500×4500 px. A direct link is here: http://www.inat.fr/files/london-metro-subway-tube-map.png
I like the map too. Whilst packing in so much detail it manages to avoid looking too cluttered. I agree it could be tweaked towards the more usual landscape proportions and that could help with space for station names etc. as you suggest. Also it might appear alongside other information panels to help fill the usual display space.
It is good, although cold have done with some proofreading. For example I notice that Berrylands and Norbiton are in the wrong zone and Gunnersbury has no zone indicated at all.
The Victoria- Catford loop services is missing, as are some peak-only services like the third side of the Strawberry Hill triangle.
And why do SE services from Victoria and CX (but not CSt) get the same colour?