Redesigned circular London Tube map takes internet by storm, as creator says current version is ‘lamentable’
14 August 2024, 12:00
A redesigned version of the London Tube map has gone viral, with the creator calling the current version "lamentable".
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In Maxwell Roberts' design of the iconic map, the Tube lines are represented by circles and spokes, rather than the largely straight lines in the original and current versions.
Mr Roberts, a psychology lecturer at the University of Essex, said the current Tube map was ineffective.
He posted his redesign on social media, where a million people saw it within 24 hours.
Mr Roberts said: "The current state of the official London Underground map is lamentable for all sorts of reasons. It has poor balance, simplicity, coherence and topographical accuracy.
"It fails by any criterion of effectiveness you can imagine and has been in a neglected state of decline for years," he wrote on LinkedIn.
"I caused a stir a few years ago calling it a ‘garbage piece of lazy design‘ and nothing has happened since to change my mind."
Mr Roberts first redesigned the Tube map in 2013, putting Tottenham Court Road station at the centre and building the map around it.
He was prompted to rework his circular Tube map this year after Transport for London (TfL) issued their own circular version.
Explaining the difference in his new design, Mr Roberts said: "This time, I tried Oxford Circus as the geometric centre, permitting some nice symmetry inside the Circle Line...
"Overall, I am very happy with the result. I think I’ve achieved my objectives and, placed next to my original, the earlier map looks a bit clunky and naive."
He said that he saw his map more as an "exploration" than necessarily "the correct way to map a city", adding that this would be "impossible" to do.
"I have mapped London in so many different ways over the years and my designs can’t all be correct," he said.
"Instead, I see my work as exploration, and I publish the results so that people can see what I have attempted and can evaluate the outcomes for themselves."
The current Tube map is an evolution of the design by Harry Beck in 1933. Before Mr Beck's design, the Tube map had tried to show where the lines were in a geographically accurate way, which could be confusing for passengers.
Mr Beck understood that passengers were more interested in where stations were in relation to each other, rather than strict geographical accuracy. His simpler, schematic redesign was inspired by diagrams of electrical circuits.
TfL said that the Tube map was "an iconic piece of world-renowned design" and they had no plans to change it.
They added: "While there have been some previous ‘circular’ designs of a London Tube map created by fans and other designers over the decades, [the new] design was specifically created in-house by our design team for this campaign and only shows the London Underground lines."
