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Light at the end of the tunnel?
Just about every visitor to London will have rubbed shoulders with the great unwashed on the city’s famous underground transport system – also known as ‘the tube’.
Often derided for being smelly, over-crowded, noisy and bumpy, the underground is nevertheless an incredibly efficient method of transporting Londoners without resorting to the traffic-choked maze of London’s streets.
Equally famous, and vital for understanding which tube stations to get on and off at, is the London Underground Map, a minor design classic instantly recognised the world over, and the source of many imitations in other countries.
Designed in 1933 by London Underground electrical draughtsman, Harry Beck, the underground map is a triumph of visual clarity, compressing and expanding a highly complex, multi-tiered system of interconnecting tunnels and underground routes into a two dimensional model of elegant simplicity.
Millions of Londoners and international tourists use the map each year, and visitors with only a rudimentary grasp of English can still understand the map within just a few minutes.
Although not a mapmaker by trade, Beck based his design on one of the electrical circuitry diagrams he was familiar with, realising that wiring diagrams could just as easily replicate the underground rail networks.
The resulting map is in every underground carriage, every station, and has made its way onto a host of London souvenirs including T-shirts, tea towels, postcards, flags, and many others.
But now the days of the Underground Map may be numbered, with the introduction of a new ‘Oyster Card’ transport system that links travel in Greater London into one giant conglomeration of tube trains, buses, trams, suburban trains, the Docklands Light Railway and Thames Clipper river boats.
It’s a good idea in theory, allowing Londoners and visitors to travel easily above, below and across the city using whatever services they desire – but how do you show it all on a single map?
Current attempts to show the Overground and Underground networks have not been a success, with some critics comparing the results to a ‘plate of spaghetti dumped carelessly on the floor’.
It’s a complex network, and a complex mapping problem that no-one seems to have yet sorted out.
Various suggestions have been made to throw open the design problem to students and designers around the world to come up with a solution for London Transport’s quandary.
So if you think you can solve the problem, and see your design immortalised on London trains, buses and T-shirts forever more, now’s the time.
If you’re a good negotiator, or you’ve got a good agent, you might even make some money.
(Image courtesy of London Transport and www.trainweb.org )
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Often derided for being smelly, over-crowded, noisy and bumpy, the underground is nevertheless an incredibly efficient method of transporting Londoners without resorting to the traffic-choked maze of London’s streets.
Equally famous, and vital for understanding which tube stations to get on and off at, is the London Underground Map, a minor design classic instantly recognised the world over, and the source of many imitations in other countries.
Designed in 1933 by London Underground electrical draughtsman, Harry Beck, the underground map is a triumph of visual clarity, compressing and expanding a highly complex, multi-tiered system of interconnecting tunnels and underground routes into a two dimensional model of elegant simplicity.
Millions of Londoners and international tourists use the map each year, and visitors with only a rudimentary grasp of English can still understand the map within just a few minutes.
Although not a mapmaker by trade, Beck based his design on one of the electrical circuitry diagrams he was familiar with, realising that wiring diagrams could just as easily replicate the underground rail networks.
The resulting map is in every underground carriage, every station, and has made its way onto a host of London souvenirs including T-shirts, tea towels, postcards, flags, and many others.
But now the days of the Underground Map may be numbered, with the introduction of a new ‘Oyster Card’ transport system that links travel in Greater London into one giant conglomeration of tube trains, buses, trams, suburban trains, the Docklands Light Railway and Thames Clipper river boats.
It’s a good idea in theory, allowing Londoners and visitors to travel easily above, below and across the city using whatever services they desire – but how do you show it all on a single map?
Current attempts to show the Overground and Underground networks have not been a success, with some critics comparing the results to a ‘plate of spaghetti dumped carelessly on the floor’.
It’s a complex network, and a complex mapping problem that no-one seems to have yet sorted out.
Various suggestions have been made to throw open the design problem to students and designers around the world to come up with a solution for London Transport’s quandary.
So if you think you can solve the problem, and see your design immortalised on London trains, buses and T-shirts forever more, now’s the time.
If you’re a good negotiator, or you’ve got a good agent, you might even make some money.
(Image courtesy of London Transport and www.trainweb.org )
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