Will do, I will create a new thread. Also, I will update my web page, www.tubemapcentral.com
Hope to be going to press at the end of the month, then I can work out how to take credit card payments online, although the London Transport Museum will be selling copies.
I do wish that Intaglio gave me more access to control points on Bezier curves. The ways of adding/removing handles and converting from cusp to tangent and back are so clunky that I always reach for Canvas when working with lots of these.
From the back cover:
Underground Maps Unravelled
Travel by public transport in any city around the world, and the chances are that sooner or later you will find a stylised map whose routes have been drawn as straight lines – horizontal, vertical, or diagonal at 45º – joined by tight corners. The geography has been considerably distorted, and most of the surface details are missing, but the people who produced the map hope that you will find it easy to understand, and that it will encourage you to make use of the network more often.
Schematic maps are commonplace, not just in trains and stations, but art galleries and souvenir shops worldwide. They have become part of popular culture, but how successfully are designers achieving their basic objectives: do these maps really make life easier for passengers? This book is the result of over ten years of investigation by a psychologist, exploring the fundamentals of usability.
Too many schematic maps are not fit for purpose, commissioned by managers or created by designers who blindly follow tradition, lacking the ability or inclination to test the work in objective usability studies, and who do not understand how people identify and interpret information in order to make sense of their surroundings. Such maps are either poorly optimised, or else inappropriate design rules have been chosen, incompatible with the structure of the networks that are being mapped.
This book gives an in-depth analysis of how schematic maps assist the user, when they fail, and the psychological theories that explain why. It asks whether traditional design techniques are suited to today’s complex networks, and explores what happens when the rules are broken. The result is an astonishing collection of maps for cities worldwide that challenge preconceptions about the nature of effective design.
Whether you are a graphic designer, transport professional, or just a frustrated commuter, maps will never seem quite the same again
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