Buy A London Underground Map
Another early combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in conjunction with four other underground railway companies that used the "Underground" brand as part of a common advertising factor.[10]
buy a london underground map
The first diagrammatic map of London's rapid transit network was designed by Harry Beck in 1931.[1][2] He was a London Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were largely irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get from one station to another; only the topology of the route mattered. That approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams although they were not the inspiration for Beck's map. His colleagues pointed out the similarities, however, and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical circuit symbols and names, with terminology such as "Bakerlite" for the Bakerloo line.[12]
The 'look' of the London Underground map (including 45 angles, evenly-spaced 'stations' and some geographic distortion) has been emulated by many other underground railway systems around the world.[41][42] While London Underground have been protective of their copyright they have also allowed their concepts to be shared with other transport operators (Amsterdam's GVB even pays tribute on its map).[43]
Attempts to create alternative versions to the official Tube map have continued. In June 2011, the British designer Mark Noad unveiled his vision for a more 'geographically accurate' London Underground map.[51] The map is an attempt to see if it is possible to create a geographically accurate representation of the underground system and still retain some of the clarity of Beck's original diagram. It uses similar principles, fixed-line angles (30 and 60, instead of 45) and shortens the extremities of the lines to make it more compact.[52] In 2013, Dr Max Roberts, a psychology lecturer at the University of Essex with a particular interest in usability, information design and schematic mapping, issued his own version of the Tube map. His design, based on a series of concentric circles, emphasised the concept of the newly completed orbital loop surrounding Central London with radial lines.[53] A map created to illustrate Tube-related articles on Wikipedia in 2014 was praised for its clarity and for including future developments such as Crossrail.[54][55]
4) Suppress all topographical features other than a graphic representation of the River Thames (in the case of London) that defines the north-south divide of the city. With the central section of the network being underground and majority of stations named after locations (eg. Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus) and landmarks (eg. Westminster, St. Pauls etc.), geographic locations are unnecessary.
The tube map was designed in 1931 by Harry Beck, an Underground employee. This is the brilliance of his design: Beck was the first to realize that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveler who wanted to know how to get to one station from another - only the topology of the railway mattered.
The Great Bear is a four colour offset lithograph mounted in an anodised aluminium frame. It is an altered version of the map of the London Underground created by Henry (Harry) C. Beck (1903-74) in 1931. Patterson replaced the names of the underground stations with the names of engineers, philosophers, explorers, planets, journalists, footballers, musicians, film actors, saints, Italian artists, sinologues (Chinese scholars), comedians and 'Louis' (French kings). Each of these categories is listed next to a coloured line (representing the different train lines) at the bottom right of the image under the title 'Key to Lines'. The names on the map range from the obscure, known only to people with specialised knowledge - sinologues, for example - to the well known figures of popular culture - film actors and actresses and footballers. Patterson has not adhered strictly to his key, adding the names of politicians to the line representing journalists, painters to the line representing musicians and Henrys to the line of Louis. He has commented:
The map, consisting of coloured lines intersecting over a diagrammatic representation of the River Thames, is enclosed by the outline of a grid which is numbered 1-9 in the horizontal co-ordinates and A-F on the vertical co-ordinates. Below this, the index to stations lists all Patterson's names in alphabetical order, creating another set of potentially humorous associations. The work's title appears in large letters at the top of the print, next to the London Underground logo. It refers to the astronomical constellation of the same name. Patterson has explained: 'the underground map moved on from being an underground map as a fixed logical thing, to a meaning that, like music, is in the mind. I started with a map that is to some extent an abstraction of the urban landscape the tube stops can be seen as stars in a constellation, where you imagine the lines to connect the dots.' (Quoted in Greenberg, 'The Word According to Simon Patterson, Tate: The Art Magazine, issue 4, winter 1994, p.47.) A related work, a wall painting made in the same year, J.P. 233 in C.C.O. Blue 1992 (Tate T07120) is based on a Delta Airways flight diagram showing all the destinations served by the airline. In this work the geographical destinations have been replaced by the names of politicians, artists, filmmakers, monarchs, scientists and musicians, who form another 'constellation' of stars painted in white against a blue background.
This original Coolicon shade was designed in London and released in 1933. Just like the original London Underground map designed by Harry Beck. This cream shade with the London underground map Inside the shade makes for a quirky pendant which no one has at the moment! Ideal to hang in a team of 3 over a breakfast bar with any fabric flex you want. We have various colours as well.
The London underground map is known throughout the world and is a true icon of design. This incredibly well researched book delves into the history of the map from the early beginnings of the underground system up to the current incarnation based on the classic design introduced in 1933 by Harry Beck. In the early days the individual companies produced their own maps, some of which used existing street maps overprinted with the underground lines in a different colour. Others were more graphical but all were more or less to scale. As more lines were opened things became complicated and there was considerable rivalry between the companies, some showing other lines in a much fainter colour. 1908 saw the first real attempt at a complete map of the system and soon pocket sized maps were produced. When the Underground Electric Railways Company of London became the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933 things settled down and this was when the Harry Beck map was seen for the first time. The only major change came in 1961 when an amended design was introduced giving more information including an index of stations. Subsequently this has been updated as new lines and extensions have been opened. This is a fascinating read and with the bibliography including 52 books, 12 journals and 68 newspapers and magazines it can justifiably be called the definitive article. Recommended.
NYC and London map records 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. -- rodcorp
Response to Indicating service interruptions - London The one advantage to note with using colours for the lines on which there are problems is that this makes it easier to identify which lines are encountering problems when more than one line is affected. For example, here, one can see that the district line (in green) has problems straight away, whereas if this were greyed out, one would need to work that out by a process of deduction. As a user of the underground, one wants to know which lines have problems and the colour coding helps in this.
Massimo Vignelli and the NYC underground Here's a four minute video of Massimo Vignelli talking about his 1972 map of the New York underground system, an excerpt from the Helvetica interviews. He explains how the information is arranged on the page, acknowledges his debt to the London tube map, suggests his map might have been even better without some of the geographic detail, and laments that his map has been replaced by something far less satisfying.
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.
So what are the solutions? Transport for London are, quite rightly, keen to protect the underground map as their intellectual property, so few other maps of the underground exist. The organisation has moved with the times to produce a journey planner which does inform the user of travelling times and better ways (e.g. walking) of moving between two stations. However, this is an Internet based service, which isn't that useful for the traveller on the ground. Street maps such as the A to Z convey real distances and tube stations, but are cluttered to look at and don't show the transport links. The only map I've found that shows tubes and streets (and buses) is the Quickmap all-on one. This is a larger map than a TfL tube map, with more information that is more time consuming for the novice user to consult. The problem is that it only covers zones 1-3 - great for the tourist, but not for the Londoner. 041b061a72