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 enlarge | Author: Mark Ovenden
Creator: Mike Ashworth
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $12.32
You Save: $12.68 (51%)
New (44) Used (12) from $10.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 6826
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 9.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0143112651
Dewey Decimal Number: 912
EAN: 9780143112655
ASIN: 0143112651
Publication Date: October 30, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 21-22 of 22 | | « PREV | | |
Beck and all November 20, 2007
24 out of 24 found this review helpful
A timely update to the first edition in 2003 with a new Zone: 6, listing all the latest and proposed subway systems around the globe. This extra Zone now includes hybrids like tram-trains, monorail or light rail and they all need maps. The other five Zones in the original have had their contents revised also.
I think the beauty of the book is in looking at the way various transit companies have approached the problem of communicating (sometimes complex) information in a simple way for passengers yet each map has its unique points. The book's authors rightly trace the origins of the modern designed transit map to London Transport's Harry Beck. His genius was to discard the geographic location of stations and have route lines as either vertical, horizontal or at forty-five degrees. It's amazing to see how many maps of the dozens in the book still follow this general principal.
However, creating a map that might look graphically stunning is not always enough. New York's MTA got Massimo Vignelli to design their map and it looks a visual treat but passengers weren't impressed and found it confusing so the MTA revised it. Vignelli's 1979 map and the latest 2007 MTA one are shown together on a spread in the book, two maps with the same information yet looking so different.
This update has a few more train and station photos to fill the space that was frequently left blank in the first edition and there is a nice touch with a spread near the back that includes some fantasy maps. If I have a fault with the book it is that in the new Zone 6 section many of the maps are so small that I don't think they were worth including.
I thinks it's worth pointing out that Transit Maps is not designed as a reference guide for travelers to cities around the world but as a celebration of the beauty that is inherent in these colorful diagrams.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
Love it! November 19, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
If you are a fan of rail transit systems, cartography, or functional graphic design, then this book is for you. It contains very up to date images of all of the greatest transit maps in the world. It also provides quite a bit of historical insight for the larger systems. The only thing I thing that would improve this book is if it were in a larger format. Then you could actually appreciate the maps even more. Considering some of the maps illustated are diplayed 6 feet high on subway station walls, any extra size bigger they could print this book, the better.
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