This Friday’s featured artist is Maxwell Roberts and his brilliant maps!
London
Roberts designs maps, conducts usability studies to test them, and has exhibited his work internationally!
I particularly enjoy his circle maps!
I particularly enjoy his circle maps!
Moscow
Paris
Tokyo
Washington DC
Other maps that Maxwell Roberts creates include:
Experimental maps
Today’s Underground map (and designs for many other networks around the world) strictly adheres to the rules Henry Beck first used.
How do we know that these are the best choice?
There is only one way to find out: experiment.
Pastiches
What if an Art Nouveau-inspired designer had created a map, or Frank Lloyd Wright?
Suppose the 1930s for the London Underground had been an era of lavish Art Deco rather than stark modernism. We can only guess what the outcomes would have been, but we can try out some ideas.
Digitized maps
Converting historic designs into high-resolution vector graphics, and typesetting them using modern fonts, reveals much about the original designs and revitalizes them.
Now displayable at any size, they are free from the vagaries of early printing technology.
Unimplemented designs
Many maps were never published but exist as drawings.
The implementation of such designs has many pitfalls, but the benefits of being able to see a map in something like its intended form outweigh the costs.
Might have beens
If history had been a little different, then different maps might have been the result.
Once the techniques of the early designers are understood, anything is possible, such as today’s London Underground network in the geographical style of the 1920s.
Check out these and more at his website.
And see Maxwell Roberts’ book Underground Maps Unravelled: Explorations in Information Design for even more maps, too!
TGIF!
Mary^
Experimental maps
Today’s Underground map (and designs for many other networks around the world) strictly adheres to the rules Henry Beck first used.
How do we know that these are the best choice?
There is only one way to find out: experiment.
Pastiches
What if an Art Nouveau-inspired designer had created a map, or Frank Lloyd Wright?
Suppose the 1930s for the London Underground had been an era of lavish Art Deco rather than stark modernism. We can only guess what the outcomes would have been, but we can try out some ideas.
Digitized maps
Converting historic designs into high-resolution vector graphics, and typesetting them using modern fonts, reveals much about the original designs and revitalizes them.
Now displayable at any size, they are free from the vagaries of early printing technology.
Unimplemented designs
Many maps were never published but exist as drawings.
The implementation of such designs has many pitfalls, but the benefits of being able to see a map in something like its intended form outweigh the costs.
Might have beens
If history had been a little different, then different maps might have been the result.
Once the techniques of the early designers are understood, anything is possible, such as today’s London Underground network in the geographical style of the 1920s.
Check out these and more at his website.
And see Maxwell Roberts’ book Underground Maps Unravelled: Explorations in Information Design for even more maps, too!
TGIF!
Mary^
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