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London underground map designer6/23/2023 ![]() The schematic design made it easier to see central London: it was an instant success, and has inspired hundreds of similar designs all over the world. By including the River Thames, the map feels grounded. In his iconic 1933 map, all lines were drawn at 45° and distances in the wider network were shrunk. 1933 Harry Beck’s Schematic Tube MapĪn electrical engineer, Harry Beck’s idea was to draw the map like a circuit diagram. The design is clean, but central London still appears crowded. This 1921 map was the first to remove all street level information, and just show the tube system. But as more lines were added, and the network stretched into the suburbs, it became impossible to display everything clearly. The first tube maps showed the tube overlaying a street map, with parks and landmarks. ![]() We may have lost a sense of what’s on the ground by too slavishly sticking to Beck’s strict design rules.īelow I look at the history of the Underground map, from a geographical muddle, to an iconic clean design, and then at the growing range of designers who have tried to make a better tube map. No one would suggest we go back to a geographical map, but we forget there are many different ways in which we could map the Underground. I plan to make an HTML 5 version and will add it as soon as it’s out. Unfortunately it was built in Adobe Flash which was deprecated at the end of 2020, and so I have taken it down. Designed for TfL (Transport for London), the Real Underground featured in university courses and academic papers and books on cartography.
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