this is one of the classic design pieces,
visual design pieces on the 20th century in a really funny interesting why.
So The London Transport Map is a way of building a conceptual
map of how to get around London on the underground.
It's very famous.
The logo's famous.
Everything about this imagery is famous for its clarity, its simplicity,
the little dots where you change trains, you are on lines which are color coded.
And of course, London,
you can see the River Tens going through the middle of the picture.
But London in reality the river Thames doesn't have neat corners like that and
the railway lines don't have straight lines like this.
It's a map which conceptualizes travel abstractly in the way which is usefully
different from the ways in which the actual space of London is laid out.
But rather, this is a new version of this map, which is very very cute.
You can see between each of the The stations
there is a actually a little number which is the walking time between the stations.
And one of things about being on a train like this is you can't,
it's in the dock it's on the ground you can't see where you're going.
You're not quite sure how far it is.
And by saying, look, if you actually got out and
walked this, it'd be seven minutes.
It's actually telling you not to get the train because
it's another piece of information which is being put there.
And it's also telling you something very simply.
If you were up on the street, you don't really know that it said, well,
if you had your phone you'd know.
But this map wouldn't tell you that it's seven minutes and don't bother getting
the train because you could walk it quicker than waiting for a train.
So Again what are the features of this map?
Well, firstly, it refers to train things, which is stations and places,
the same way the previous image referred to train things.
It refers to the London underground.
But in this abstract conceptual kind of way, so it's a visual representation
Which operates at a kind of level of generality and
abstraction which is useful in terms of planning your itinerary.
So, we can go through each of these five questions.
The structure of it, it's a quite beautiful,
elegant structure in terms of the way in which the hull of
a huge city's huge underground is represented on one very simple map.
So, it's structured in these particular ways, with a key.
Down the side, which it's a very very explicit structure to facilitate
an easy reading path for a particular user and
the context is this other world which actually in reality looks very different.
So there's a context, which is you can get some pictures of London and
you head down and you can say, London doesn't look like this at all.
And the intention is not just around getting the train.
The attention is around not getting the train in some funny kinds of ways.
So if we can actually ask these five questions
it helps us deconstruct the visual grammar of this particular train picture.
To a third train picture.
