Three new chapters of the part Details of Ilya Birman’s Designing Transit Maps are out. The chapters are ‘Symbols’, ‘The city’, and ‘Excellence’. This concludes the part Details, and there will be an interactive test on all of its chapters.
The book speaks of transit maps history, important principles of their design, and how they evolve together with their networks. The author talks about techniques: plotting the lines, denoting the stops, choosing the fonts, and composing the final poster.
Few designers have an occasion to design a subway map. But the principles and techniques discussed are applicable to any tasks of complex information display: org charts, family trees, control‑flow diagrams, fire escape plans, military operation plans, project timelines, architectural drawings. The book sharpens the reader’s eye and inculcates attention to detail.
Symbols
On a map, you can use symbols as a graphic indication of the mode of transportation, route, services provided, features, operating restrictions, parking availability, or points of interest. How to reduce noise but keep the symbols obvious and unambiguous? What symbols for train stations, airports, parking lots, ramps, and elevators are used in what cases? How to harmonize symbols and gather them into a separate information layer?
The city
The street grid on a map helps to better relate transportation network to physical reality and grasp the image of the city more quickly. So how should the streets be depicted and labeled on the map? Which streets, in general, should be depicted and which should not? When and how should rivers, ponds, parks, mountains, and other features be depicted?
Excellence
The elements on a map interact, generating new meanings and images. This means that these interactions themselves are worth looking at separately. In what order should the overlapping lines be stacked? How to treat the overlap itself: with outline, shadow, glow, or transparency? How to adjust the stacking order of routes in a bundle so that all turns are obvious? What to do with gaps between routes in this case?
Test
After the chapter, there is an interactive test on the whole fourth part, The details.
Sample chapter
The chapter ‘Bends’ is available for free. In the chapter Ilya Birman shows good and bad ways to bend the lines, introduces the bend visibility principle, talks about harmonizing the bends in line bundles.
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