S2 Episode 10: Show Me the Way to Go Home

Maps and diagrams: representations of reality that can make life better. Strangely, the greatest accuracy or truth to life does not necessarily make life better.

In this episode we look at how our perception affects our interpretation of maps and diagrams using the iconic London Underground Map as an example. And you don't have to hold an Oyster card to get in.

Transcript

Speaker 0:04

Hello there and welcome to another episode of Make Life Better by Design with, as always me, Kevin Drayton. Today I'm gonna talk about maps and diagrams, the difference between them and why accuracy can sometimes be overrated. Both maps and diagrams can make life better if they're well designed. So sit back, buckle up, take a deep breath as we go through the Keyhole! Oh, oh, no, sorry. That's, that's something different. Well just do what you like then. I'm going to start with a question. Have you ever tried to sketch a simple map to show someone how to get to a particular place? If you ask six people to do the same thing, you're likely to get six quite different results, and I'm talking about the same route if you like. I, I'm fascinated by maps. The sort of ordinance survey ranger series type of thing. The posh name for that type of representation is cartography. With anyone that's got a feeling for design, most maps, uh, are things of beauty. And nowadays they, they tend to be pretty accurate representations of the, the patches of the earth that they cover, but t'was not always the case. The development of cartography makes for absorbing study. It is really interesting to see how over time the depictions of places become more and more accurate so that'Here Be Dragons' eventually morphs into a passible representation of, well, you fill in the blank. Unfortunately, the ability to read an accurate detailed map is not granted to everyone at birth. The road to comprehension often stumbles at just trying to get the map the right way up for a start. So let's go back to my opening question. The business of sketching a little map for someone. And here we leave the rarefied heights of cartography for the scrubbier lowlands of a very idiosyncratic subsection of graphic design. Graphic designers get their fair share of stick. Much of it from me, I admit, but good ones certainly can make life better. I'm not gonna go into the whole subject of graphic design today. Uh, I'm dealing very specifically with maps and associated diagrams. The fascinating thing about any hastily scribbled directional maps,(maps, you know, such as how to get from the church to the reception venue) is what they say about the different points of importance that each person remembers of the route that they're drawing. Some people will mark churches, filling stations, shops, others tend to emphasise traffic lights, schools, speed bumps. Interestingly, compass directions don't seem very important. I mean, a stretch of clear road with no other features that in real life, meanders left and right, might as well be straight for the purpose of these, these diagrams. Same goes for distance if there are no prominent way markers on a particular stretch. Which just goes to show that the world I see is slightly different from that of my neighbour. The spectrum of geographical guidance moves between the highly subjective to the pathologically, but not always easy to understand objective. Comprehension and verisimilitude do not always co inhabit. Which finally, yes, I know about time brings me to a piece of graphic design that has made and continues to make millions of people's lives better. To wit the map of the London Underground and specifically the versions produced by a designer called Harry Beck, who worked for London Transport in the 1930s. I say versions plural, because the map didn't arrive fully formed, never to be tampered with again. There were maps of the underground before Beck, but Beck's genius was to recognise that what was needed was not a map, but a diagram, something less'accurate', but better able to be grasped by the majority of people. If you're interested, the full story of the, the genesis of the underground map as we know it now is worth seeking out. If nothing else, it paints a very vivid portrait of the sort of stuffy hierarchies of public bodies such as London Transport at that time. Consequently, others tampered with Beck's design ostensibly to improve it, but really they're mere footnotes to what I think is Beck's genius. Beck understood that comprehension was the primary concern, and he achieved this by adopting three underlying principles, which if you just describe them, probably seem quite counterintuitive. One: lines could only be drawn horizontally, vertically, or at 45 degree angles. I think I said horizontally. Yeah. Alright, horizontally. Secondly: the central area of the map or the diagram was enlarged and the outer section compressed. Fairly obvious why a lot of the attention needed to go on Central London and the bits around the outside, uh, were not so detailed in terms of numbers of stops and so on. Thirdly: the distances on his diagram between all stations were shown the same. You might think, and many people said it didn't work, but it did. Beck continues to work on it trying to make it even better until 1959, when he left London Transport, uh, to take up another position. But the interesting thing is that London Transport. Saw it as belonging to them, not Beck, and they subsequently invited other designers to try to improve it. They weren't very successful, but it wasn't until 1973 that the essential Beck's design was revived with relevant updates to the period. So that's 1973. Beck himself died in 1974. And it's only since 2001 that all underground maps, sorry, maps of the London Underground contain an acknowledgement to Harry Beck and his original design. For me, this is a story of huge significance. The map of the underground is the quintessence of how design can make life better. It's elegant and refined, but at the same time, accessible and egalitarian. For an architect obsessed by accuracy and the avoidance of ambiguity, it is a great illustration that there may be other criteria of greater importance in the service of design as a life enhancer. So that's a relatively short episode this week. Uh, but it does touch on one of the most important pieces of design that makes life better that I've ever come across. We shall broaden our horizons, uh, for the next episode. Uh, and I'm not gonna tell you about that because I'm not entirely sure what it's gonna cover, but there we are. Thank you very much again for listening. It's been lovely to have you join me, and I very much look forward to being with you again. Until then, goodbye for now.