Design Icons - The London Underground Network Map

 

London was home to the first underground railway and still has the most comprehensive, usable and useful metropolitan network in the world. It's line stretch east and west to the extremes of Heathrow and Essex; north and south of the city and the river. Plotted on a traditional map, as it was before 1933, it would be an unnavigable mess. It's probably fair to say that the overall success of the tube is at least partly as a result of the wonderful topological network map which Harry Beck developed at the beginning of the '30s and which was first issued to travelers in 1933.

Beck was at least partly inspired to create his map based on work by George Dow, who created the horizontal single line maps which adorned the underground trains of the '20s. These threw away the concept of geographical accuracy, to the point where stations along an individual line were shown equidistantly along the line.

Beck took this concept and applied it to the network, adding in the use of distinctive colouring and station symbols; and restricting the lines to vertical and horizontal planes, or at 45° angles between them. The map offered no true indication of geographic distance between stations, but commuters were rather more interested in how to get between stations than how far apart they were.

Beck's map allowed commuters to plan their journeys much more easily, increasing the use of the network. The design continues to be used in updated form for the much expanded London rail network and has also been copied in some form or another by almost every other city in the world. 

See other design icons here.