Turning to the lighter side of map design, I have always been intrigued by what-ifs. What if an unpublished sketch had been put into production? What if a classic design was still in use today? Sometimes I create something purely for artistic effect – what if Frank Lloyd Wright had designed
a map for the Chicago El? These flights of fancy all have one thing in common: getting the lettering
right is crucial.
Often, there is a suitable digital font available off-the-shelf. Railway companies were pioneers of corporate identity and it is not surprising that they chose (or even created) important typefaces to letter their maps. The London & North Eastern Railway famously adopted Gill Sans for their publicity. Less well-known, the operator of the S-Bahn network in Berlin was forced to adopt Drescher Grotesk owing to there being no copies of Futura available for use in East Germany post World War II.
If an off-the-shelf font is not available, sometimes there will be a close match. Lettering has always been difficult to copyright and popular typefaces attracted imitations. If a few letterforms (or glyphs) are not quite right then redesigned ones can be substituted to give the desired authentic effect. For example, lettering on the classic Viennese Stadtbahn maps seemed to have its basis in the German typeface Erbar but with various glyphs modified to tone down the quirkiness of the original. For my modern update of the map it was easy to take an off-the-shelf version of Erbar and substitute letters as needed.
Very occasionally, I might undertake a project for which there are no suitable off-the-shelf computer fonts available and then I research and create my own lettering. If I need to create an actual computer font then I use Type Tool, which has all the basic functionality necessary.
George Dow is one of the lesser known pioneers of schematic map design: predating Henry Beck, and
much more creative. Unfortunately, no known print examples of his splendid 1935 LMS London suburban
map are known to exist, only a monochrome image
from a contemporary railway magazine. This map
was one of my early attempts at a digital recreation (2009). Lines are fairly easy to re-draw as vector
graphics but hand-lettering presents a conundrum.
Hand lettering is inherently variable. I could have tried
to trace each individual letter to impersonate this but,
as I have argued elsewhere, this would look wrong in the context of the perfect vector-graphics railway lines and stations – every angle correct, every stroke width the
same, every station blob the same size. In any case, what
I was trying to do was show this marvellous design to the
modern world – people accustomed to high quality print reproduction. It is possible that
the quaintness of obsolete techniques and technology might distract from appreciating the underlying design. Therefore, I decided to analyse the letters themselves, identify the preferred way in which each was constructed, and turn these into computer font outlines.
This was a rather ambitious project for a first font. To impersonate all the lettering, I needed three different weights plus lower case letters. Fortunately, this hand lettering was definitely mono-stroke (all stroke widths identical within letters) and there was only one missing letter to guess, the Z. In the process I learnt a lot about
the optics of font design, and the delights of using font creation software to set up kerning pairs.
This is definitely a case in which the layout of the lines, at their jaunty angle, and the distinct of-its-time lettering, complement each other exactly. Unfortunately, too much so. I have experimented with Dow Sans in other contexts and it never looks quite right. Just right for this map, but out of place everywhere else. This is an intriguing demonstration of the lost art of hand lettering, adjusting the style perfectly to complement the exact context in which it is set.
I call the 1930s the Decade of Diagrams. All round the world, the ethos of Modernism was providing a foundation for maps to become schematised. Often, this corresponded with network modernisation, such as electrification, and this appears to be the driving force behind Copenhagen’s new suburban railways diagram that was introduced in 1934.
This map caught my eye not just because
it was an early schematisation. K. T. Seest,
chief architect for Danish State Railways
(DSB), had adopted the official London Underground Johnston lettering for general use by his employer, apparently without the knowledge of London Transport. A hand-drawn approximation was used on new suburban railways map.
The Jernbanemuseum (Danish State Railways Museum) kindly supplied me with a high resolution scan of the original reference lettering (above) and I faithfully traced the outlines in preparation for making a computer font using TypeTool (left).
Comparing this with Johnston’s original work, it was clear that the Seest lettering was not a direct
copy. No two letters were quite the same and many differences were more than could be accounted for
by the vagaries of reproduction.
With this lettering implemented, I could now complete the task of digitally recreating the classic 1930s DSB Copenhagen suburban diagram with pristine lines and lettering. In
fact, the diagram is a strange hybrid: The lettering is indisputably English, but the lines themselves are shown in an identical way to the Berlin S-Bahn diagram first published in 1931. According to sources at the Jernbanemuseum, there were close contacts with the Deutsche Reichsbahn, who operated the network shown on the Berlin map
Schmidt Bauhaus Sans
Continuing with the theme of the Decade of Diagrams, another discovery was a marvellous 1930 diagrammatic map drawn by Joost Schmidt, a member of the Bauhaus school. This gave highly schematised directions for getting to the school at Dessau in Germany.
The Bauhaus design was an interesting contrast with the Berlin S-Bahn diagram produced one year later. Although both were ostensibly modern schematisations, the Berlin
S-Bahn map was less elegant and its lettering, derived
from Prussian Railway standards of the early 20th
Century, was not exactly cutting edge.
I therefore embarked upon one of
my what-ifs. What if the Bauhaus designers had attempted a Berlin
S-Bahn map? The Dessau map had plenty of stylistic elements and symbology that I could make use
of and, more importantly, serifed lettering (unusual for the Bauhaus school), lower case only, that I could use to make an authentic, distinctive pastiche.
The hardest part of this project was finding solutions for the missing letters. Plausible inferences are possible based on what is there (for example, with m, n and u available, a plausible w can be inferred) but the x and v were speculation, although I was assisted by
suggestions from designers on social media. Fortunately, the g was present, its delightful intricate curves would otherwise have been unguessable.
With the basic layout
of lines and stations
set out and lettered,
I felt the map needed
a distinctive headline
to ‘lift’ it. Additional research led me to another sketch by Joost Schmidt, this time applying strict geometric forms to create sans serif lettering, upper case only, in the classic Bauhaus style. Although even fewer letters
were available than for the serifed lettering,
the general principles could be extrapolated
to create a plausible looking alphabet, along with a condensed version. The headline thus provided an excellent contrast to the map lettering and now all the elements were in place. Digital ‘airbrushing’ completed 1930s stylistic jigsaw.
But not quite. As a result of test prints, it
was clear that, in the context of station
name lettering, the stencil font was barely legible. This was unacceptable even for a
map with artistic (as opposed to usability) intentions. De-stencilling the lettering took
me one more step from the authentic original, but gave me two fonts for the price of one, and solved the legibility problem.
I particularly enjoy the decorative arts of the late 19th and early 20th century, and many of my personal projects reflect this. Off-the-shelf, there are many Arts & Crafts and
Art Nouveau fonts available, but
the next step towards authenticity for a period map is lettering with
a close connection to the subject matter. The London Underground developed rapidly from the 1890s
to 1900s and so there is no need
to accept second-best. A search for authentic period lettering actually in use on the Underground will reveal much variety – corporate lettering, consistently applied, simply did not exist in those days – and the above photograph is one of my favourites.
I count at least six different styles.
Three of these are straightforward Grotesks (early sans serifs). There
is delightful Art Nouveau lettering: “Bakerloo Tube”, but with too few letters to extrapolate to an entire alphabet. There is an intriguingly modern looking sans serif advising “Where to live and how to get there” but, what really caught my eye, was the elegant serifed lettering right
over the station entrance. It oozes Arts & Crafts style, and must have enjoyed some sort of official status, it being the primary (and possibly original) announcement for the station. Most of the alphabet is present, with speculation only needed for C, F, H, J, M, Q, U, V,
X and Z. Even for the gaps, there were other clues available. The structure of the letters closely resembles those used on tiled
walls of certain station platforms.
Of all the fonts that I have created, this is my favourite. It is authentic, legible yet distinctive, and versatile:
it looks in place in a wide variety of
period settings. One day, if I pluck
up courage, I will create lower case letters to go with it.
In a recent exhibition of my work,
maps of the modern Underground network in Arts & Crafts style, and the Rotterdam Metro in the style of the Dutch de Stijl movement, faced each other. The pair demanded to be bridged and so I created a poster that advertised the historic ferry service that connects Harwich to Hoek van Holland.
I needed lettering to link the two maps, and I looked for inspiration from the Amsterdam School of design, which flourished between
the First and Second world wars. Stylistically, the lettering associated with this has its roots in the Arts & Crafts movement, but with letters
that are more geometric. Rather than create
a font using already-existing work from the Amsterdam School, I wanted something more geographically neutral that could reside in the middle of the North Sea, half way between Dutch and British design.
I took inspiration from Bauhaus methods, using
a grid and two standard curve-radii but, rather than creating stern-looking German lettering,
I wanted a more jaunty effect – reminiscent of
my own Curvy Maps. This was partly achieved by the larger curve radius being slightly too large to be strictly practical. I also created multiple versions so that the letters could be chosen contextually – look at A and M in Amsterdam (left). Comparing with Bauhaus lettering above, it is surprising how strict geometry can result in such different effects.