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| Re: TfL finally updates London Connections map... (371715) | |||
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Re: TfL finally updates London Connections map... |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Thu Jan 18 06:21:50 2007, in response to Re: TfL finally updates London Connections map..., posted by Rail Blue on Wed Jan 17 09:01:34 2007. The triple line is really bad between Great Portland St and Farringdon on the current map, where it obliterates the Piccadilly, Northern, and Victoria lines. Some rip-off Underground maps separate the lines slightly (see p88/89 of my book), which permits glimpses of the others underneath. Technically, the teacup line is just one, so the Circle and H&C line could be merged (no plans to do this), Hammersmith and Circle Line anyone?Rotating the 'crazy map' as I call it might look tempting, but it interferes with some station name placements, and transfers the awkward kink in the Central Line at Shepherd's bush into an awkward kink in the District Line at St James's Park, an would throw too much of the District and Piccadilly Line ino the lower left corner. Evrything on this map has been done for a reason, albeit not necessarily an obvious one. As I said, I too am not happy about Shepherds But to experiment with improving it, I would have to start again completely. Once one little thing is changed, knock-on effects are felt everywhere. I would really need to lock myself away in a room for a month with no contact with the rest of the human race to do this properly, but I have so many other things to do. Hmm, London connections. I've sort of done this already. I adapted the map to show the BR London services which were comparable with the Underground: In the zonal system, with a service at least every 15 minutes 7 days a week, 18 hours a day. Its quite deptessing, although many gaps are down to sloppy timetabling (e.g. take a look at London/Lewisham on a Sunday: three trains every 30 minutes, but they all run within 10 minutes of each other).  Past work wasn't so much bloopers, as trying to optimise the concept. For example, inspired by Beck's notebook, (see pages 74-76 of Ken Garland's book) and discovering that SuperPaint had a feature that permitted constraining a line to 30/60 degrees off I went. Several people at the time were complaining that the official Underground map showed nearby stations as distant, so I thought that the extra angles would permit a diagrammatic map that was also not geographically misleading. WRONG! 30/60 degrees is not enough. You end up with a diagrammatic map that is geographically inaccurate and looks frightening, so I relaxed the angle rule still further. This makes the design harder to implement, and challenges human aesthetics still further, but it does highlight that kinks on a map are wrong. I might have some time tomorrow to make some scans, including the Met experimental stock, I haven't forgotten. Don't forget that with a fantasy map, it is sort of OK to modify your fantasy a little bit if it makes drawing the map easier. I've done this on mine in a couple of places, not telling where though! |
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