London Underground maps (+ worldwide subway maps)

Harry Beck’s diagram of the 7+ lines of the London Underground, although geographically inaccurate, provides a coherent overview of a complex system. With excellent color printing, classic British railroad typography (by Edward Johnson), and, in the modern style, only horizontal, vertical, and 45 degree lines, the map became a beautiful organizing image of London. For apparently quite a number of people, the map organized London (rather than London organizing the map). Despite 70 years of revision due to extensions of the Underground and bureaucratic tinkering (the marketing department wrecked the map for several years), the map nicely survives to this day.

Later European and American knock-offs did not succeed at all. The Underground Map and Minard’s famous Carte Figurative of the French Army’s disaster in Russia in the war of 1812 are alike in important respects: both are brilliant, and neither travels well. The Underground Map and Napoleon’s March are perfectly attuned to their particular data, so focused on their data sets. They do not serve, then, as good practical generic architectures for design; indeed, revisions and knock-offs have usually been corruptions or parodies of the originals. Both, however, exemplify the deep principles of information design in operation, as well as the craft and passion behind great information displays.

There is a fine book on the map: Ken Garland, Mr Beck’s Underground Map (Capital Transport Publishing 1994). The book describes the enormous care, craft, thought, and hard work of Harry Beck that went on for decades–exactly what it takes to do great information design and so in contrast to the quick-and-dirty practices and thinking of commercial art. Garland’s book is also a model for writing histories of great information designs.

The map makes 3 significant design compromises: substantial geographic distortion, a complex color code for identification, and, in small sizes, it is difficult to read.

The beauty of the orthogonal London Underground map is that it provides exactly the information the rider needs – the name of the line (with color coding), the direction of travel (East, West, North or South – the same way that the directions to the platforms are given), and the stops on the way. Distance between stops and geographical orientation are of very secondary interest to finding the correct train. Most stops are about the same time of travel apart and the trains come frequently enough that you don’t need to plan to catch the 7:04 am Picadilly Line Eastbound from Gloucester Road arriving at Green Park at 7:22 am (my old commute), for example.

Incidentally, the platforms are also well marked with a map that runs from top to bottom on the wall as you enter the platform. The station from which you are boarding is at the top, and all of the remaining stations on that route in your direction of travel are shown down the diagram. It’s very handy for confirming that you really did want to go in the same direction as the train you are about to take.

On the other hand, as you could infer from the geogpahically correct map, you do miss some spectacular architecture and landmarks by traveling subsurface. For this reason, my wife much preferred the bus – until she got stuck in London traffic for an hour covering the same distance as a 10 minute tube ride. I seldom used the bus, as I found the London bus route map to be unintelligible.

A few of the varied London underground maps:

Transport for London are replacing surface street maps at bus stops with London Underground-style maps, which is just dumb, eliminates useful information about surrounding streets, alternate routes via walking, etc.

Other kinds of information are also being shown with Underground-style maps, for example this map of independent coffee shops:

The Moscow Metro Map ranks up there as well, in my opinion. Some things are hard to put forth in a map however; for example, some trains only go as far as the last transfer on the dark green line, and then switch automatically to blue, while others go all the way. Only the locals, and those who can listen for the announcement in Russian, ever figure this out.

Other than that, the directions are superb. The interior signs are well-placed (again, you learn as much reading Russian as you have to) in most of the former Soviet cities, as is the case in other cities in the area, too bad their maps don’t really do it like Moscow’s though. For example Kiev:

Note added by ET: In the Moscow map, gratuitous noise and content-free shapes are generated by the figure-ground contrast and activated negative space. Thus visual clutter. See Envisioning Information, chapter 3 on this.

Some marginalia around underground/tube maps:

NYC: both Todd Glickman and Peter Lloyd maintain records of NYC subway maps, which include a series of six or so issued in the days/weeks after 911. By all accounts, that period was handled very well. These maps occasionally come up on eBay and tended to have: a box which stated when the map was reissued and referred travellers to mta.nyc.ny.us for more updates, and a speech-bubble enlargement showing the lower Manhattan area.

London: the best records of issued maps are probably Letch’s London Transport Bus and Tube Maps 1920-2000 and Burwood and Brady’s London Transport Maps 2nd edition, 1983.

Picking up on ET’s comment that the London tube map is highly optimised for its context, can we recognise cities from the thumbnail images on these Google Images searches? (and does that actually tell us anything useful about their design?): subway map, tube map, metro map.

That’s a wonderful use of Google Images by rodcorp-to make international comparisons across subway maps.

The forum cited by Tom Carden has a great many interesting maps.

Picking up on the geographic distortion in the map, it’s clear that for some journeys it’s really not worth getting on the London Underground: it takes a long time, and costs you money. Sometimes it’s quicker and easier to walk.

So here’s the tube map with some small additions to show which stations are an arbitrary and as-the-crow-flies 500 metres apart from each other:

London Tube Map with Walklines: sometimes it’s quicker to walk

You can see the ‘walklines’ superimposed on the standard map, the same with a faded out tube map, or just the lines. It makes the tube map less readable (not a good thing), but it was an interesting exercise.

Update: An October 2008 revision to the tube map adds a few distance markers to the map. It’s 250m between White City on the Central line and Wood lane on the Hammersmith & City. And to the right, 100m between Shepherd’s Bush Central line and overland. There’s a similar thing at Canary Wharf Jubilee line: it’s 200m from Canary Wharf DLR and 150m from Heron Quays DLR. I particularly like the angle they’re drawn at – like an elegant version of the walklines I was trying out a long time ago.

But this isn’t quite so successful: there’s 100m between West Hampstead overland and West Hampstead Jubilee line, and the latter also has a comment that West Hampstead Thameslink is 200m away from the tube. The tube map used to simply show the tube and overland stations as a single node on the map, which I think was better.

cheers

rodcorp

Prior to finding this thread about the Tube Map, I discovered Rodcorp’s site while searching for information about the “flaws” in Beck’s map. Your maps and charts are really beautiful, and I’m wondering if (this question could be in response to Jeffrey Berg’s most recent post too) you followed this project completed last year in Amsterdam?

Here’s a bright idea — an e-map that shows routes people actually use. With GPS tracers and GPRS networks, the Amsterdam RealTime project tracked 75 volunteers as they walked, cycled and drove around the city. After 40 days, the cumulative data lit up this map: The more travelled the route, the brighter it glows. (The really hot spots are red.) RealTime was part of an exhibit at the Amsterdam City Archive last fall. After receiving requests to make similar maps of Brussels, Lisbon and Paris, the project is considering taking its code on the road. Next up: licensing the technology or distributing it as freeware. —Wired

As a city with incredible public transportation and a sophisticated graphic design presence as well, it is interesting to see how human movement through the city (regardless of transportation mode) is broken down to a graphic level. The resulting maps are really quite beautiful, and are an interesting compliment to
your Underground map with walking routes.

best, Jamie Hazlitt

In all this discussion, I’m surprised that the Tokyo subway gets no mention! It also has a lovely map. I took at photo of the system map at Shinjuku Station when I was there recently. Note that the ticket dispensers for each line are color coded to match the line. The Tokyo Metro website versions of the maps don’t do justice to the physical maps at the station. When granted adequate lateral dimension, the map comes out very nicely.

When riding the subway, the older cars have a light that blinks on a scale map showing the next stop station. The newer ones have an LCD flat panel high resolution display that cycle between the map, the Roomaji (Roman characters) name of the station, the Hiragana (Japanese phonetic) name of the station, and the Kanji for the station. I was very comfortable getting around in spite of having minimal Japanese language ability.

I also found their city maps and printed maps to be superb. The Shobunsa map of Tokyo was indispensible, with subtle use of color, lots of detail, and a convenient carrying envelope.

Here’s an interesting subway map style:

It’s for the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They’ve drawn the network in more of a geographical layout and have also incorporated some of the major streets, parks, and landmarks.

ET note: Figure-ground contrast is too strong, making white lines too active.

Has anyone seen the London underground map in 3D rendered by Corey Clarke which takes it to a different level? Wow!

The geometric purity and beauty of Beck’s map is wonderful and is a big symbol of the Underground; the geographically accurate map is also just fine.

It is often a good idea to use an aerial photograph as a base grid for a transportation map. See, for example, pages 108-109 of Envisioning Information.

The NYC Transit Museum displays examples of subway maps from the system’s entire history.

There was an excellent episode on the TV Series “Design Classics” devoted to the history and development of Beck’s Underground map. At one moment, they showed an animated version of the Underground map as it is morphing into a map that reflected true geographical distances–a most dramatic comparison.

A substantial guide to the London Underground Map and its many many variations.

London Underground uses the map on a web page to provide passengers with the up-to-date status of their network. I use it daily. It can be seen here.

Useful though the realtime information is I feel that the display is inverted. Problems are shown by the line being rendered in its conventional colour. At the moment, as LU deals with the debris from the bombs of July 7th 2005 the Circle, Hammersmith and City, Piccadilly, and part of the District are all shown in their normal colours. On the day of the terrorist attacks the entire network was shut down and presumably the display looked like a conventional map. That could have lead some people to infer that the network was functioning normally. Perhaps rendering problem line(s) in the grey currently used for working lines would be better.

ET response: Trevor Jenkins’ point is exactly right. What has changed is not the lines that have continued operating but the lines with problems. Thus the non-operating lines should be grayed down in the representation. This becomes clear when looking at the disconcerting display.

Perhaps a better approach than graying-out lines (or blinking and flashing!) would be to have an “X” marking the problem area rather than the whole line. For example, take a look at how Paris displays service interruptions:

The obvious thing, however, would be a legend that would list the lines that are not working and the delay.

Central Line DELAYED 15min
Circle Line DELAYED 25min

Mexico City’s subway map displays both the train lines and the city’s major streets, thus avoiding the problem of exaggerated and/or inaccurate representations of the geography; certainly the fact that Mexico City is more or less circular helps make this possible. Here’s a link: http://www.metro.df.gob.mx/red/index.html

More interesting from a design sense, every station in the Mexico City system is identified by both its name and by an icon representing a landmark — a church, a famous statue, etc. — that’s visible from the entryway to that station. It’s an ingenious way of conveying information to the many Mexico City residents who cannot read.

I haven’t found a single page that displays every icon, but they can be viewed individually and in their linear groupings at the subway’s official site: http://www.metro.df.gob.mx/red/linea1.html

Lastly, here’s a page that displays many of the world’s subway systems to scale, and in their actual physical forms. It’s a useful reference for anyone interested in subway maps, and it’s just plain interesting: http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/

The full document includes excellent samples, but the pseudo-color chips seem unnecessarily repetitive–especially because they are all rendered as RGB.

A few years ago an excellent signage color scheme was put in at Chicago’s Midway Airport. Within weeks it was camouflaged by some season-long event advertising that used the same colors and hung from every lamppost. At any useful distance you could not distinguish parking directions from yet another invitation. I see a parallel to ET’s instruction that “the strategies of magic suggest what not to do” (VE, Ch. 3). Do these identity standards ever proscribe advertising or other signage that competes with the identity?

Time maps were done about 25 years ago for the Tokyo subway by a famous Japanese
map designer. Here is a version done for the Boston subway:

In response of the link http://www.oskarlin.com/2005/11/29/time-travel/ Here is an concept-map of the London Underground, which is inspired by the map Of Oskarlin. The number of NB’s at the bottom of the site is clear that there is still a lot of work to do. LINK: http://brainoff.com/mirror/tube_map_travel_times/

Dorian Lynskey of the English newspaper, The Guardian, has created a version of the Underground map with each line representing a different musical genre. Each station is named after a influential artist or band. The real beauty is Lynskey’s attempt to use appropriate bands for the intersections between lines/genres.

Download a pdf version here.

The London Underground map finished second to the Concorde in the Great British Design Quest.

The evaluation depends on how various criteria for “best” are weighted. The Concorde:
way ahead in its class, completely different, beautiful, amazing, and breaking the military monopoly on supersonic flight–but a service available only to the rich, environmentally obnoxious (per passenger mile, although not in terms of an overall accounting of pollution sources, and trivial compared to military aircraft). The Underground map: effective, influential, served millions and millions of riders, long-lived, no damaging side-effects, beautiful in its unique way–but not the runaway best in its field, some inept versions produced during its long history.

Both produce extraordinary, memorable design experiences. Neither ever worked very well outside their immediate context.

The main design lessons from the map: content-driven design (by someone possessed by the content) rather than designer design alienated from content, the enormous attention to detail, the persistent power of an extraordinary base diagram, the ability of the tenacious Beck to improve the map incrementally over the years, the compromises necessary in mapping a complex system, beautiful typography the idea of producing something beautiful, straight-forward, and widely used.

The Concorde lessons: the experience and intensity of being on different planet, the architectural beauty of a grand machine, the strangeness of the cabin (a long narrow tube of a rocket (2 seats, a narrow aisle, and 2 seats) with an interior surface that becomes very warm to the touch by the end of the flight), the Mach meter hitting 2.0, the miracle of putting London or Paris 3 hours and 48 minutes from New York, the economic issues raised by the whole thing, the funny stories generated by the flights. And walking up and down the aisle shamelessly scanning the passengers for celebrities.

Prompted by the contribution immediately above I went to the voting website a few weeks ago but could not choose between the two, unable to compare Concordes with
Underground Maps.

Compare Beck’s Paris Metro map mentioned above with “Le” plan du metro, Le grand classique de la RATP many years later:

<img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/edwardtufte.com/Paris_metro.png&quot; alt="Le grand classique de la RATP" style="width:629px;height:638px;

Another set of maps depicting time travel (as opposed to distance travel) for Great Britain, including London, here (click images to see larger).

With contours shown at ten-minute intervals:

Moving slightly further out, nearby tube stations (St James’s Park, Westminster and Pimlico) and bus routes to the south and east are important. Further south there are islands of accessibility around mainline train stations such as Brixton and Clapham Junction. On a smaller-scale map, the tube and railway lines themselves show up as chains of such islands:

On this final map, of the whole Greater London area and surrounds, the contour lines are at half-hour intervals. At this scale the suburbs of London appear to be arranged along a southwest-northeast axis, a result of good rail links to Surbiton and Twickenham (at the ends of the two red tendrils which stretch away from the center to lower left). Other rail lines, such as those to Bromley and Orpington in the southeast, are also visible, as are islands of short journey time such as Watford (northwest), Hersham and Esher (southwest); these surround individual locations with fast (c. 1 hour) journey times into central London.

Thank you for referring to my thesis, Gerd.

As for applying Beck’s design principles to other networks, I agree that one needs to do this with care. However, his basic principles like octilinearity, straightening lines, and concentrating on the network’s topology are adopted in a huge majority of current metro maps, see Ovenden’s book. These diagrams might not become as iconic for the city as in the case of London, but they still make navigation on the network easier for passengers.

What are other classics that you could think of in terms of implementing them as automated designs? Our algorithm is particularly tailored for drawing networks which is also my current research interest.

Consider this project by Eddie Jabbour, graphic designer for Kick Design, to replace the confusing NYC subway map (below: originals on left and Kick maps on right — click for larger versions).

Encouraged by the interest being shown in the project, Eddie Jabbour contacted the MTA and designers at the agency agreed to meet with him.
But when he showed up at the agency’s Midtown offices with copies of his work, they were quick to find fault with it. According to Christopher Boylan, the transportation authority’s executive director of corporate and community affairs, who recalled the meeting, the main criticism was that Mr. Jabbour’s map, like Mr. Vignelli’s, was artistic but geographically inaccurate.

There’s an interesting piece on Jabbour in the New York Times.

The other day, in his minimalist office, Mr. Jabbour pinned two maps to the wall, then pointed to the different renderings of the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn, which he says is the most difficult station to represent because so many subway lines converge there. In Mr. Jabbour’s map, the subway lines run parallel to one another, making the map easier to read, if slightly inaccurate. Each line is marked with a circle bearing the route’s letter or number, instead of the oblong station markers used on the current map.

There are other differences. Unlike the official map, Mr. Jabbour’s map does not have a single line representing all the trains in a “cluster” route, like the 1, 2 and 3 trains in Manhattan. He used the same type font throughout, and words travel left to right, rather than diagonally, as on much of the official map. The lines bend only in 45- and 90-degree angles, to create a gridlike pattern.

In the eyes of Mr. Jabbour, the New York system is too complicated to layer on information like commuter rail and bus routes, as the current map does. He would like to see a map that is singularly devoted to the subway.

That map, created in 1979 by Michael Hertz (who was officially credited with the design) and John Tauranac (who was chairman of the map committee), in turn replaced the highly conceptual map created by the Italian graphic designer Massimo Vignelli. Mr. Vignelli’s map was aesthetically pleasing but geographically inaccurate; it depicted Central Park as a square rather than the rectangle it is, for example, and offered riders no sense of where they would be once they left a subway station.

When the current map was adopted, the subway system was decidedly unpopular. The trains were dirty, and riders associated the graffiti-covered cars with crime, often rightly so. Mr. Jabbour sees the current map as tainted by those perceptions. The subways improved dramatically in the 1990s, and in his opinion, the map needs a similarly ambitious face-lift.

Mr. Jabbour’s interest in subway maps began when he studied abroad in London in the mid-1970s while earning a degree in design from Syracuse University. Eager to explore the city and even get lost in it, he immediately recognized how easy it was to navigate the city’s Underground. The “tube” map, an acknowledged masterpiece in the field, was Mr. Jabbour’s main inspiration for his current project.

He planned to continue working on a hybrid of the two previous designs until he was satisfied that his mother, “a woman from the Midwest,” could read the map. Then, three years ago, Mr. Jabbour briefly acquired a larger audience. His name had been mentioned in a newspaper article about the design of the city’s subway map, and his map was posted on foamer blogs like Live From the Third Rail. Hoping to seize the moment, he contacted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and to his surprise, designers from the agency agreed to meet with him.

But when he showed up at the agency’s Midtown offices with copies of his work, they were quick to find fault with it. According to Christopher Boylan, the transportation authority’s executive director of corporate and community affairs, who recalled the meeting, the main criticism was that Mr. Jabbour’s map, like Mr. Vignelli’s, was artistic but geographically inaccurate.

“He’s a good designer and it’s an interesting map,” Mr. Boylan said. “The design is important, but the thing we’re concerned with is the best directional guidance. We design a map for use, not solely to look good, and we think it looks good.”

In 2007 the Madrid metro was redesigned by Rafa Sanudo with a higher level of line generalisation by not presenting any 45 degrees line (original article in Spanish).

People seem to be upset by this new map. I think that a big change like this will take some time to be accepted. Although I think it will not be a big problem especially for new users, I wonder if it was really necessary.

Underground “maps” are basically diagrams that allow the reader to detect the path from A to B and they are of course a distorted representation of the real world. So distorted that they are not even maps. But, although diagrams underground “maps” have their own language made of symbols, colors, text and lines.

Is it really necessary to take out one “word” (45 degrees lines) from this language in order to simplify things?

Does it really simplify things or contribute – at a first glance – to increase confusion in the old users?

A new design might also stimulate the use of alternative paths different from the ones suggested by the original map.

Realising when there is a more suitable form of transport between two stations does require quite a bit of learning at present. Here’s a map by Applied Information Group (part of Legible London) designed to speed up that learning process – it shows journeys that take less time on foot than they do by tube. I’d say it’s more powerful and memorable than further annotations to existing maps.

Too much current map design is based slavishly on the London Underground map principles and not enough creative thinking goes into the interpretation of complex modern travel systems. The aim should be to make what is unclear on the ground easier to understand, yet often what is straightforward on the ground is made to look less practical.

Although iconic, the groundbreaking map design solution created by Harry Beck (London Transport) has many inherent problems. Lines that are straight often have to made crooked because of the limitation caused by the 45° maximum angle. Then, to reduce the number of bends (an enemy of clarity) interchange stations suffer by having multiple interconnected nodes that bear no relationship to the??ease or difficulty of a change – and purely for the cartographers convenience. And the dominance of the interchange symbol over the tick, distorting the importance of stations, is questionable. The map also leaves unsolved the issue of different lines sharing the same route, shown inconsistently either touching or separated. And the Beck formula doesn’t work for many other systems, for example, the Paris map using his formula is no more helpful in planning a journey
than the geographic one.

The map designer should not be forcing a network to follow these abstract rules but should look for clues on the ground to show the individuality of region being depicted. London has a coke-bottle shaped circle line that defines the shape of the west end and city; Europe has the Rhone Valley with its distinctive arrow shape with the point at Frankfurt; Manhattan has its own distinctive tilt; there’s a tilted parallelogram that links Liverpool and Manchester together; there’s the axis of a major thoroughfare – these are all shapes and angles that help the user identify with a map. Yes, complex areas need opening out, long station names have to be coped with, but geography is always there.

Please see my website ProjectMapping.co.uk to see many innovations. For example, the new UK rail maps feature 22.5° angles to enable all main lines to radiate from London and to reflect the backbone, or shape, of the country. They also develop a new system to solve the problem of repetitive place names where there are multiple stations on multiple lines. The Merseyrail map uses 30° and 60° angles which help to shrink the size of the map and more accurately reflect how the network ‘looks’. The Greater Manchester map indicates the city centre by the use of a large capital M and usefully shows the platform layout at the divided Piccadilly station. Lines that are balloon loops or have natural curves are shown as such and are not forced into squares with the corners rounded off.

I came across a fascinating book when browsing through my local bookstore here in London: Mapping London: Making Sense of the City, by Simon Foxell. The book includes several classics well-known on this forum, including the Snow cholera map and the Beck underground map (along with examples of what the Underground map looked like prior to Beck), but also displays many other fascinating representations of London. Well worth a read for any budding cartographers.

Note that in the UK, the map is the brand. A rail network map isn’t just about how to get from A to B. A rail network map is about the identity of the business or organisation running services on those lines. It’s what makes one operator distinct from another, it’s what gives different systems their individual identity.

The BBC reports:

Removing zones from a new map of the London Underground network has made it “confusing”, a passenger watchdog said.

Transport for London (TfL) distributed the map last weekend without the River Thames and the fare zones marked on it.

I’m not convinced the changes have really “simplified” and “uncluttered” the map.

An installment of a recent series about subway signs and wayfinding in Slate focused on London. In a nutshell, wayfinding signage with carefully-designed maps are being used on the street to supplement the geographical inaccuracies of Mr Beck’s map.

Wayfinding signage for city streets is very different from the wayfinding programs you find in transportation environments like Penn Station or Heathrow. In an airport, the signs boss you around: Check in, go to security, proceed to your gate. On city streets, good signs are more like valets: They give you options, telling you about nearby attractions and helping you figure out where you want to go. Transport wayfinding gets you from point A to point B, but good urban wayfinding systems help you develop your own mental map of a place. As a result, they’re often more aesthetically complicated than the this-way-to-baggage-claim arrows that confront harried air travelers; they usually include extensive maps or provide an index of streets or amenities.

Legible London marks one of the first efforts to subdue a city so immense.

Why is London willing to try out new signage? Surprisingly, it has a lot to do with the success of an earlier sign–the amazing, iconic London subway map. When people picture London, they often picture Harry Beck’s diagram of the tube. But the tube map–though a groundbreaking, elegant, and useful piece of information design–bears only a hazy relationship to the city’s real layout. The map, which was first released in 1933, abandoned the geographically accurate style then customary among transit maps. Previous maps of the London system had been hard to read, because they squeezed the stops in central London close together in an effort to make room for the elongating tentacles of suburban lines. Beck deduced that transit maps don’t have to be–and perhaps shouldn’t be–straightforward geographical representations. And so he straightened out the map’s lines and enlarged its scale in the center of London, enabling passengers to understand how the city’s most-used stations and lines connected.

Beck’s approach has been much emulated since–so much so that it’s rare, these days, to find a metropolitan transit map that doesn’t take some liberties with geography. But there’s one major downside of Beck’s map, especially considering that it’s a primary means of understanding the city for locals and tourists alike: The tube diagram gives users mistaken impressions about distance–in particular, locations that are in fact quite close together can appear far apart.

As a result, people often overestimate the difficulty of walking to nearby locations, taking the familiar tube instead. In recent years, as the tube has become more congested, that’s become a problem. The tube in central London often operates at maximum capacity. At rush hour, the Oxford Circus station–located in a busy shopping district–can get so crowded it will close its doors, waiting to clear passengers from the station before it lets new ones in. As a result, the mayor’s office and Transport for London (the agency that runs the Underground) have been looking for ways to encourage walking in the city. They see Legible London as a step in that direction.

Legible London hopes to reduce tube congestion by showing Londoners how disparate pockets of the city link up. Step one is to produce a geographically accurate map of London that’s designed for pedestrian use and includes key landmarks–major stores, architectural oddities, even details like the style of pavement–that will help walkers find their way. Step two is to make that map available to as many people as possible, by posting it on street signs, tube stations, and bus shelters, and by making copies available to locals and tourists in shops and hotels. The project has been developed by AIG Group, a design firm based in London. A prototype was rolled out in London’s Mayfair neighborhood in 2007, and in 2009, the city opted to launch pilots in several other areas: Covent Garden and Bloomsbury, South Bank and Bankside, and Richmond and Twickenham.

Legible London is an unusually narrow project in its focus on pedestrians. Most American urban wayfinding systems, like the ones in Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C., are designed for drivers and pedestrians, linking highway signage to major city streets to parking options to pedestrian pathways. Legible London’s brief is simply to get people to walk more. Still, the London project offers an interesting window onto how urban sign systems have evolved over the past few decades.

One crucial component is the map. Traditionally, maps on these sorts of signs offered a bird’s-eye view of the area in question, and were oriented with north at the top. Over the years, though, designers have learned that people tend to do better with maps that detail what the facades of buildings look like–a helpful feature for users who have trouble extrapolating from a 2-D map to the 3-D world around them. Legible London’s maps put this principle into practice, featuring axonometric renderings of key landmarks.

Tim Fendley, the AIG designer heading up the Legible London project, says his firm’s aim is “to help people insert themselves into the map.” AIG tested several orientations during the development period, and users consistently preferred a “heads-up” orientation that puts whatever the user is facing at the top. While there were a few complaints from military men who objected to the deviation from the north-at-the-top standard, Fendley says, “We kind of figured they didn’t need the help.”

Another hallmark of modern wayfinding design is an evidence-based approach. Fendley’s team stood on street corners in Mayfair every Friday morning for a period of months, often holding up enormous prototype maps and observing user response. These tests helped determine, for example, that the signs needed an index. Although architects had suggested doing away with the index for the sake of clean design, Fendley’s team found that this frustrated users: “We took [one] out there, and three people came up and looked at it and said ‘Where’s Swallow Passage?’ And I knew it was there; I knew the map by heart. And I was thinking, It’s there! It’s there! But they were like, ‘Oh, rubbish!’ And off they went. And I thought, ‘Damn. We’re going to need an index.’ “

Another item that tested poorly was the original “You Are Here” icon. But AIG found that another element on its map–the target circles it used to show which destinations are within a 5-minute walk, and which are within a 15-minute walk–helped snap the user’s attention to the center of the map. Initially, the circle was “a lot weaker,” Fendley says, but after positive user response, “we turned the volume up.”

(Continue on Slate.)

Genius re-designs and updates of the design classic can be found here.

“On the Vaunted City Subway Map, Mistakes and Phantom Blocks” written by Matt Flegenheimer of The New York Times on May 6, 2012, talks about the errors on the New York City subway map.

“I’m more than embarrassed,” he said softly.

Many New Yorkers have undoubtedly noticed that the subway map has its geographic faults, from peccadilloes like a wayward street to more obvious inaccuracies like the supersize island of Manhattan.

But Mr. Tauranac’s sheepish discovery of the errors has at once rekindled and complicated a long-simmering debate over who deserves credit for the watershed 1979 guide. Michael Hertz, whose firm is credited with designing the initial template for the map, has long chafed at Mr. Tauranac’s calling himself the “design chief” on a project that has garnered numerous accolades, including a commendation from the United States Department of Transportation and the National Endowment of the Arts.

“We’ve had parallel careers,” Mr. Hertz said in a telephone interview. “I design subway maps, and he claims to design subway maps.”

After years of publicizing his role in print, in lectures and on his Web site, Mr. Tauranac has a new strategy that is his most inventive yet, Mr. Hertz said. By taking the blame for the blunders, he said, Mr. Tauranac implicitly assumed credit for the rest. “That’s his shtick,” Mr. Hertz said.

But he appeared in no hurry to take responsibility for the mistakes himself.

“He’s overseeing the project,” Mr. Hertz said, adding that he himself perhaps deserved some blame, but “not as much” as Mr. Tauranac. “I was not an expert on the geography of the city,” he said.

Presented with Mr. Tauranac’s findings, Adam Lisberg, chief spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the agency would consider amending future editions of the subway map, provided the changes did not distort its clarity.

But Mr. Lisberg took care to cast the Broadway quirks, particularly those near Lincoln Center, not as errors but as the byproduct of “design decisions” on a map that is not intended to be precise. He said he was not aware of any rider complaints about the West Side geography ever having been recorded.

“This is not a street map,” Mr. Lisberg said. “This is a subway map.”

On the New York Public Library’s blog, Cynthia Chaldekas of the Mid-Manhattan Library wrote an article about the subway’s history, “John
Tauranac Talks New York City Subway Map History,” recounting a talk given by map designer John Tauranac in April 2010 at the NYPL.

1940 Vorrhies subway map sponsored by Union Dime Savings

Initially subway maps were produced by businesses, whose need for revenue produced maps that showed all the subway lines equally and major points of interest. For example, The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd St. produced a number of handsome maps for the subway rider, starting in the 1930s. Once the lines were merged in 1940, the real work of creating a map that was both useful and aesthetically pleasing began. On Tuesday April 27th, John Tauranac presented The “Unofficial” Subway Maps: A Look at How Individual Mapmakers Have Depicted the Mysterious Workings of the Subway at the Mid-Manhattan Library.

John Tauranac is a mapmaker. He was design chief of the classic 1979 NYC subway map that has formed the basis of the all NYC subway maps since that initial design. John Tauranac is also a connoisseur of maps and that was made clear throughout his talk. One of the first statements he said when he began his discussion was “clarity is king.” By this he meant that a map, any map, needs to be useful. If not useful then what is the point of the map. Pragmatism should be desired over aesthetics. Keeping this in mind, John also went on to eloquently state, “Graphic design is a solution to a problem, with an overlay of aesthetics.”

What followed was a tour of historical New York City subway maps, whereby the discussion veered into nuance and overall design of each map. John talked at length on the difference between a schematic depiction versus a geographic depiction of the subway system. A schematic map does not necessarily follow the geography of an area. If the information desired to be on the map distorts the area being drawn, so be it. A geographic map is the opposite; the mapmaker strives to keep the integrity of the geography in tact. He then showed examples of maps where attempts had been made to reconcile the two.

John also waxed and waned on more subtle aspects of subway map beauty. The choice of some mapmakers to use unnatural colors for natural occurrences, such as making the bodies of water throughout the city yellow or making parks gray instead of green, John felt was a poor design choice. John pointed out how something seemingly small can lead to great effect, like blackening an outer edge line, to create clarity, at the same time enhancing the overall beauty of the map by establishing a visual contrast. The thin darkened line brightens the color within the line, making it easier to see and also making it more aesthetically pleasing.

The mapping of the New York City Subway System is complicated. Our transit system has express lines, night and weekend service, as well as a complex network of transfer points. We are the only transit system in the world that has all these things. Choices about what information to include and what not to include on a map must be considered. Also, the way in which certain features will be expressed must also weigh into the design discussion. All these considerations lead to a level complexity that makes the mapmakers task very challenging.

There have been designs of the NYC subway map where, in one instance, the look of the map was more important than the overall utility. World class designer Massimo Vignelli was commissioned to design a map for the city. The result was the 1972 subway map. It is a striking document, austere, even restrained. It is a schematic map where lines of color represent the different train lines. For my eye it is simply too minimal and disconnected from the subterranean world of trains under the city, as well as the hustle and bustle that floats along the city’s surface. Vignelli’s map description is a disembodied relative of the complex cityscape New Yorkers experience both above and below ground.

A remedy to Vignelli’s map was the 1979 subway map, whose skeletal remains have formed the basis of all the city’s subway maps since. It is a geographical map that is at once understood and appreciated by riders everyday.

comparison of three types of maps: the 1979 map , combination map, 1972 Vinelli map

“Mind the Maps,” an excellent blog post by Ollie O’Brien of University College, London’s CASA Institute on recent takes (post-2010) on the London Underground map, featuring a collection of various versions of the tube map marking the 150th year of the Underground.

For a comprehensive overview of alternative tube maps try this listing from The Londonist. The latest incarnation being one made from Lego.