I wanted to find a way to reserve the circular station shape to only indicate interchanges (its original purpose), which meant I had to come up with a different way to show accessible stations. See how much nicer it looks below with ticks for stations! The DLR is a web of blue blobs (which is fantastic for accessibility needs) and becomes very visually heavy in comparison to the rest of the map. Their use of a large circular station marker – regardless of whether or not they’re an interchange station – adds visual confusion and clutter to the map, and impedes the reading flow of route lines. Next, the accessibility icons, which are a design problem for a few reasons. TfL could offer an extra map that contains this information if people need it (like many European transit agencies do), but I kind of get the feeling that tap-on, tap-off Oyster cards mitigate the need for most travellers to know which zones they’re passing through. They’ve only been on the Tube Map since 2002, so it’s not a huge loss. So – first things first: the zones have to go. The more I look at the map, the more it’s obvious that the zones are making the routes and stations subsidiary to them, not the other way around. If there’s a long station name, the zone has to enclose it completely, which can push the station marker out of harmonious spacing with the other stations on the line (see the Piccadilly line out to Heathrow), or force station names to suddenly swap to the opposite side of the route line (hello, southern end of the Northern line!). Much of the blame for this belongs to the hideous alternating-stripes fare zones, which have to go around every element that belongs to a station. As a result, nothing really aligns properly with anything else anymore. There’s very little rhythm, balance or flow to the composition of the map outside the central “thermos flask”, and there’s shockingly little use of a underlying unifying grid. There’s no doubt in my mind that the current iteration of the Tube Map is a diagram that’s almost completely forgotten that it is one. Personally, I believe that the map – in its current format – is ill-equipped to handle future additions, especially with the just-announced decision to gradually transfer all Greater London commuter rail services to TfL’s control under the Overground brand.Ī number of designers have proposed alternative London rail maps that deal with this problem – like this lovely diagram by the very talented Jug Cerovic – but I started to wonder: what if the Tube Map was just drawn better? Beck’s ingenious design has been asked to convey more and more information with each passing year: more Underground lines than he probably ever envisioned, the addition of the Overground and DLR, fare zone shading (an early version of which he absolutely loathed), accessibility icons and more. The Underground network has grown in both size and complexity in the decades since the Tube Map’s debut, and H.C. The large preview of the map is heavily watermarked to make this situation clear to all viewers. It is not available for sale or for licensing. This redrawing has been executed as an educational and instructive design exercise only – a design and technical critique of the current map that also offers some ideas for future improvement. Note: the design of the Tube Map is the intellectual property of Transport for London. But how much of that reputation is actually deserved these days? London’s Underground Diagram (or “Tube Map”) has long been regarded as an icon of informational design, pioneering the way for just about every other schematic transportation map in the world since its inception way back in 1931. See also: More design notes on the map, and a newer version showing out-of-station interchanges.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |