Rethinking the London Underground Map: Design Blasphemy?

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Rethinking the London Underground Map: Design Blasphemy?

October 21, 2011

A segment of the London Underground map designed by Harry Beck

Earlier this week at the Talk to Me symposium, Sandra Bloodworth outlined how the MTA is finding its way to better urban design. A recent example we’ve seen is the MTA Weekender website, which features a streamlined interactive map designed under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. As we learned from Fast Co. Design, London too has released an online reinterpretation of the London Underground map. But how did our friends across the pond improve upon an already legendary work of graphic design, a map that already sits tight in the “cartographic pantheon?” Click to find out.

Learning a thing or two from the Brits, the MTA adopts a simplified map, shown in part above, for their Weekender website

As Fast Co. Design summed up for us, the classic London Underground map was designed by Harry Beck to do exactly what Vignelli’s New York map did when it briefly saw the light of day back in the 1970s: Beck pushed geographic accuracy aside, abstracting the city into neat geometric shapes, delineated by colorful, beveled edges turning at clean 90- and 45-degree angles. Station transfers became immediately legible, enabling commuters to discern London’s subterranean transport system with just a quick glance.

Harry Beck’s London Underground Map, currently in use today

Or is that so? Some would argue that praise of London’s remarkably intelligible underground map has blinded us to holes in the design. In particular, designer Mark Noad was aware of how confusing it is for visitors who are suddenly spit above ground from their pleasantly lucid ride on the Tube. Beck’s geographic distortion of the city often makes stations appear right next to each other when in fact they are quite far apart.

Thus, Noad re-visualized the London Underground map, adding 30- and 60-degree angles to find a workable balance between simplification and geographic accuracy, and also adding an interactive feature that denotes transit times between stations. These changes shed light on how the network below relates to the city above.

A segment of Noad’s redesigned map, showing lines curving at 30- and 60-degree angles

A segment of Noad’s redesigned map marking the number of minutes between stations

Noad’s interactive map highlights stations with confusing transfers and signifies the walking time between stations

Like Vignelli’s redesigned map, Noad’s map is not meant to fully replace the working Underground map but to serve as an online guide and a companion iPhone app. Along with clarifying confusing transfers, Noad’s interactive map clearly marks the stations with handicap access with a feature that deletes all but the step-free stations.

In one online feature, the handful of handicap accessible stations are clearly demarcated on Noad’s map