Roberts M – TUBE MAP CENTRAL – 2019 2019

Description

From January to December 2019 the newsletter surveys diverse schematic-map projects and reflections. Highlights include a faithful recreation of Macdonald Gill’s 1921 Underground lettering, and speculative digital reconstructions of Imperial Airways airline schematics inspired by Henry Beck and James Gardner. A Vienna U-Bahn student workshop produced inventive octolinear, hexalinear and curvilinear maps. The author reviews 1930s diagrammatic maps—especially a restored Chicago schematic—and examines unofficial London Underground derivatives, including a 1968 Stern guide with printing-driven changes. Experimental applications include a transit-style visualization of recorder fingering that reveals hidden patterns, and pastiche maps inspired by Constructivism and Bauhaus applied to Moscow and Berlin networks. Practical critiques target poor TfL bus maps and a flawed Romford bus diagram. Social and playful projects—hundreds forming a human Tube map—and an unused Mondrian/KLM-inspired book-cover world map are shown. The year closes with discussion of copyright in map design and how computer-generated, non-derivative maps challenge plagiarism claims.