Written by Mark Ovenden
This book celebrates the diversity of rail-based transit systems in urban environments by collecting together for the first time their cartographic evolution.
For those of you needing a translation, this is a book that collects every major map of an urban rail transit system from around the world…display their visual evolution from the first sketches & drawings, to the most recent (as of 2007) official design…and dammit, just forces you to appreciate how utterly beautiful and compelling they are. Geometry, geography, and graphic art, mixed together with an alchemy worthy of Andy Warhol…if he were a transit geek! :D
This is a book that appeals on many levels. A geographer will discover this book to be one of the most creative urban atlases ever devised. A transit geek such as myself will overdose on having the subway/RT/LRT maps of every major transit city on Earth…comparing them, contrasting them, and contemplating future visits…both real & imaginary. A graphic arts designer will look at these maps and see the most amazing array of fonts, colours, styles, and textures. Maps that demonstrate the historic progress of how to communicate information to the masses, and communicate such information with unparalleled style. As for any person who appreciates modern art of all forms…you could (and should) frame most of these amazing diagrams!
I poured over this book for hours…at one point, until my bath tub water went ice cold. There isn’t a single page that doesn’t delight the senses…some even try to blow your mind. In particular, the Rhine-Ruhr map (a circuit diagram drawn by leprechauns), the Moscow map (a rainbow circulatory system for a mad alien creature), or New York City (a many-tentacled urban super-creature).
It’s the ultimate picture book for over-grown adults, it’s a coffee table book to end all coffee table books, and it’s a collection of graphic design genius. If reading a book aspires to be a sensual experience, Transit Maps of the World takes such ambition to its logical conclusion.
Mind you, all of this could simply be the opinion of my four year old self…a boy with the burning ambition to become a bus driver. ;-)
