51–60 of 65 posts
The zone boundaries are not clear at all. I see the words Zone A and Zone B within an area with the same background colour, with the words Zone B and Zone C "tacked on" to a border. Is Zone C the area outside the framing rectangle?
Contrast is a bit low, and line colours are just slightly too similar. Maybe the fare zones would be clearer in grey, like the London tube map.
I certainly don't mind such experiments, but after living in Berlin for quite a while now, I still have to hear anyone complain about that the transit map is hard to read. I personally would even say that it's one of the easier ones I have used regularly (compare to Stuttgart for example, which is pretty cryptic due to the city's geography).
I've spend a lot of time in Berlin, and I find it hard to read. Mostly in that sometimes it's relatively annoying to determine what lines will get me from Station A to Station B. For example, let's say you're a tourist and you arrive at Hauptbahnhof, and you need to get to get to Alexanderplatz - what lines will get you there? There's a whole bunch, and it's very hard to figure that out quickly. Or you might see that…
The map is very beautiful and clear, so please take these as small nitpicks: The zone boundaries are not clear at all. I see the words Zone A and Zone B within an area with the same background colour, with the words Zone B and Zone C "tacked on" to a border. Is Zone C the area outside the framing rectangle? Contrast is a bit low, and line colours are just slightly too similar. Maybe the fare zones would be clearer in…
Interesting side note: The designer of the map Pasha Omelekhin seems to work mostly for the Russian agency Art. Lebedev where he was also involved in the official redesign of the new Moscow metro map [1]. They also have detailed process descriptions for most of their projects. Among others the agency works for big Russian state owned corporations, like Gazprom. [1] https://www.artlebedev.com/metro/map3/
If Art. Lebedev doesn't ring a bell: They designed the Optimus Maximus keyboard.
Why would you use curved lines, when they point in the wrong directions at the stations? For example Westkreuz and ICC stations should be mirrored vertically to have the correct orientation. The same for Schoeneberg etc... Super confusing, the official map is a lot easier to read, at least it's clear that's an abstraction. If you need to locate stations on a real map just use their real map that shows all stops.
The “organic” curves in the new map might have been much more difficult to achieve and experiment with using older methods (which I assume was a physical medium) than modern vector drawing tools.
I dislike how this map is presented as almost official. The author does not seem to have any relation to Berlin traffic authorities. This should be framed clearly as a proposal.
IMO quite irresponsible.
UI designers (or especially the ones that have blogs) seem highly susceptible to 2 common afflictions, which affect many people when they live for too long in their art: -- Believing that fonts and lines can solve major world problems -- Believing that anything they touch must've needed solving I find it rare that a UI designer will say "that version of it is fine, and better than the additional complications I would…
Do you think he hacked the video monitors to display his map too? The picture is clearly Photoshopped. [Edit: on closer inspection, it looks like the video monitor is photoshopped in, but the paper map is real. I like the idea of seeing how well a product works in an actual environment and getting real feedback.] I find your comment to be overly cynical. The map designer never said his map can "solve world problems",…
One of the last words are:
is it an official map? Not yet. [bla bla] then it will become an official one.
I think he thinks he's the Designer God's gift to humanity. The design is nice, but IMO the guy's kind of a dick.
Not gonna lie, without trams (the obvious best mode of transport) in the map, it's of little use. That's obviously the same for the original one. Don't understand why they are not combined. Let's be honest, it's GoogleMaps all day any day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in karlsruhe and the KVV there did a similiar change and after living with it for a few months I can say that it's a real improvement!
The KVV map did not change its layout very much. It was mostly a pretty tame transition from sharp angles and straight lines to curves. Most stations didn't change their relative position much. I don't know if the new one is better. I only remember having to unlearn the layout of the old one for a while. Also, this map change was after a time when the routes were changed around several times to accommodate the new tu…
A very different Berlin metro map, based on concentric circles, drawn by a good friend of mine (and old housemate): https://glyphobet.net/rundumberlin/ It makes much less of an attempt to correlate with actual geography, but is faster to find connections on.