Iconic Products - Tube map

Cube map. This map may look like a Mondrian painting but it's colored lines represent London's underground and overground rail network. A masterpiece of semiotics. The map of the London Underground guides millions of people around the city's tube system every day. The London Underground Railway opened in 18 63 and early maps of the system looked like conventional maps. However, as new stations opened, the map became hard to read with the train lines resembling loose bits of Spaghetti, Henry Harry Beck 19 02 to 1974. Started work in London Underground's engineering office in 1925. He drew designs for a new tube map in his own time using a diagrammatic form much like an electric circuit diagram. Each underground line was shown as a clean colored line with stations marked along it. Beck's bosses rejected his first map in 1931 saying it was too radical. But in 1933 they decided to use his elegant revised design which became a great success on this map. Big messy London was suddenly a tidy place. The journey from home in the suburbs to work in the city seemed fast and easy. Beck continued to draw and adapt maps until he left London Transport. In 1960 he had revolutionized transport maps worldwide. Beck died in 1974. But today's tube map and app still use the same basic layout of his original designs.