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Бюро Горбунова

14 августа 2024 08:21

Ilya Birman has finished the largest part of his book Designing Transit Maps—it’s out now

Three new chapters of the part Details of Ilya Birman’s Designing Transit Maps are out. The chapters are ‘Symbols’, ‘The city’, and ‘Excellence’. This concludes the part Details, and there will be an interactive test on all of its chapters.

The book speaks of transit maps history, important principles of their design, and how they evolve together with their networks. The author talks about techniques: plotting the lines, denoting the stops, choosing the fonts, and composing the final poster.

Few designers have an occasion to design a subway map. But the principles and techniques discussed are applicable to any tasks of complex information display: org charts, family trees, control‑flow diagrams, fire escape plans, military operation plans, project timelines, architectural drawings. The book sharpens the reader’s eye and inculcates attention to detail.

Symbols

On a map, you can use symbols as a graphic indication of the mode of transportation, route, services provided, features, operating restrictions, parking availability, or points of interest. How to reduce noise but keep the symbols obvious and unambiguous? What symbols for train stations, airports, parking lots, ramps, and elevators are used in what cases? How to harmonize symbols and gather them into a separate information layer?

The city

The street grid on a map helps to better relate transportation network to physical reality and grasp the image of the city more quickly. So how should the streets be depicted and labeled on the map? Which streets, in general, should be depicted and which should not? When and how should rivers, ponds, parks, mountains, and other features be depicted?

Excellence

The elements on a map interact, generating new meanings and images. This means that these interactions themselves are worth looking at separately. In what order should the overlapping lines be stacked? How to treat the overlap itself: with outline, shadow, glow, or transparency? How to adjust the stacking order of routes in a bundle so that all turns are obvious? What to do with gaps between routes in this case?

Test

After the chapter, there is an interactive test on the whole fourth part, The details.

Sample chapter
The chapter ‘Bends’ is available for free. In the chapter Ilya Birman shows good and bad ways to bend the lines, introduces the bend visibility principle, talks about harmonizing the bends in line bundles.

Preorder
Preorder is available as before and you can start reading the book right now. If you choose to subscribe to the book before it’s fully published, you will get 2 extra months free. Your official subscription time hasn’t started ticking yet⁠—we’ll start your subscription clock later. The book is being published in parts, and the readers still have their paid year plus 2 months as a gift.

Gift and special price
By the way, you can gift a subscription to any Bureau Gorbunov book to someone you know. When you give the book as a gift, you pay for the year of subscription and will not have any additional charges. The person will receive a congratulatory notification about your gift to them. When their subscription runs out, they will be able to use their bank card to renew the subscription for a reduced fee. Delight your friends, colleagues, and anybody who’s curious.

Also, a special price is available to Bureau Gorbunov Publishing subscribers. To use the special price, sign in using the address you used to subscribe to any of the other books.

Now is a good time to subscribe and gift the subscription to your friends.