Beck to The Future: Some Reflections on Designing a New Tube Map

ABSTRACT

A brief visual comparison between Henry Beck’s map of the London Underground that was published in 1933 and its modern successor, issued by Transport for London (TfL) in 2022, reveals a loss of simplicity and clarity. Hence, it is important to question whether the map’s current custodian is maintaining design efficacy and preserving Henry Beck’s legacy. In this brief paper, I discuss how some aspects of the current design could result in usability issues, outline how I approached a re-design of the Tube map, and present a new version.

KEYWORDS:

• Transport maps
• diagrammatic maps
• London Underground
• information design
• usability

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘The Tube’ is a generic term for the London Underground network, although Tube lines are actually the deep-level parts of the network, whereas much of it is shallower ‘cut & cover’ and most of it is above ground. In this paper, ‘Tube map’ refers to the map of the London Underground, which currently integrates other networks.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Doug Rose

Doug Rose trained as a cartographer at Hunting Surveys from 1966. He left to join public transport information specialists FWT in 1979 and started his own company in 2017. He has designed over a thousand maps and diagrams and was commissioned by TfL to design a bespoke range of four Johnston typefaces for about 8,000 bus destination displays, taking two years. He is also a London historian on other subjects.