... and turn it into an easy to follow diagram, making routes easy to plot for people who knew nothing about the geography of London (and also, incidentally, compressing all that wasted space in the outer suburbs while stretching it out in the central area, to make it less congested):
So far so obvious. Beck's concept has attracted the attention of a lot of designers who try to improve it, and largely fail.
The latest attempt smashes one of the rules -- that lines should only be at angles of 45 and 90 degrees -- and allows 30 and 60 degree lines. This transforms the ability to portray geographical proximity (one of the biggest flaws of the current design, where some people find themselves making elaborate journeys between two stations apparently far apart, only to discover they are 50 metres away from each other):
Actually, this isn't a bad attempt. There is certainly some loss of simplicity and clarity, but there is also a great deal of improvement in spatial relating. It still feels uncomfortable to me (but then, after decades of living with Beck, his map is actually how I see the city). But it's very easy to use.
1 comment:
Interesting!
I wonder whether it will catch on?
(Looks as though they think Can[n]on Street was named after a camera/photocopier though ...)
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