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Austin Pence Neo-Aristotelian Critique of the London Underground Map

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Austin Pence Neo-Aristotelian Critique of the London Underground Map Austin Pence Neo-Aristotelian Critique of the London Underground Map May 17, 2015 The London Underground has been a landmark in the city’s iconic history for over 14 decades. Since 1863, the train has been moving millions of people around the city. Although this piece of amazing machinery has changed the way people get from one destination to another, the London tube map is something revolutionary in its own right. Before delving into critiquing the map, the basis of this research examination is to answer why the London tube map makes sense in the way it is designed and also how effective it is when compared to other major cities’ underground maps. In order to examine this artifact using the neo-Aristotelian method, there has to be a connection with the artifact and the rhetor’s, in this case designer’s, background. The designer of the London tube map that viewers see today was drawn up by Harry Beck. Before this ingenious map design was even brought to fruition, Beck spent his time working for the Underground in the signals office. As a technical, or electrical, draftsman, Beck would not just create designs for functionality, but also for art’s sake. To analyze the design and importance of the London tube map, two of the five canons of neo-Aristotelian rhetoric will be brought into focus. From there, invention and more specifically, pathos, and the designer’s organization will be discussed. The invention of the tube map was not first created by Beck; there were previous, more confusing and cluttered versions like the “Evening News” tube map1 or even the “bird with x-ray vision”2 view of the map in the 1908 version. Being an engineer and technical designer, Beck saw a problem and was eager to create a resolution. "It was more a demonstration of his ingenuity, in seeing a problem and coming up with a solution to it, rather than a response to public demand,” says senior curator at the London Transport Museum, Anna Renton. The Tube had already been instated for some 70 years before Beck even put his original idea onto paper in 1931. Since the previous maps were too complicated to read or figure out, he wanted to draw something effortless. Easy on the eyes, in a design-sense and also for the riders and audience that wold be using the map on a daily basis, “Beck’s map was revolutionary in its simplicity," says Sam Mullins, director of the London Transport Museum. Using his knowledge from his career, Beck drafted his first sketches of the new underground map based on circuit board diagrams. “It occurred to me that it might be possible to tidy it up by straightening the lines, experimenting with diagonals and evening out the distance between stations,”3 said Beck of his ideas on what would help make the map more user-friendly and legible. The previous maps, such as the previously mentioned bird’s eye view, showed the city streets overtop the underground lines and scaled the distance between the stops as to provide accuracy, only to make the map even more confusing to read. Getting rid of these features and by using lines of all angles, Beck’s design was a cleaned-up and easier to read version. Although Beck’s design has gone through at least six changes5 to where it is today, it was not popular when he first debuted it. Officials thought Beck’s new map was too radical6 and strayed too far from the traditional. After some minor changes were made to the design and a “trial print-run showed that it was just what the public wanted,”7 the Underground department agreed to print the map, but only first as a small pocket-sized version.8 Harry Beck’s London map design spawned a new life for other cities’. His work was sometimes directly created for or influenced cities like Sydney and Paris9 to adapt a similar stylized, circuit board design to their transport system(s). While seemingly similar, London’s Underground differs from just about every metro, train and rail service across the world. Each of these distinct transportation modes vary in characteristics to fit the city’s history and its present and future population’s needs. Most famously known to Americans, the New York City Subway “is the largest subway system in the world, with 468 train stations and 26 subway lines.”10 The designer for the NYC Subway map, Massimo Vignelli, had an idea similar to Beck’s - to create a map that disregarded the exact space between two stations. Vignelli wanted to make the map as easily legible as possible, but quickly found that his New York audience did not understand it and only confused them more.11 After much re-designing, (and the almost exact reproduction of London’s map in the 70s that was easier to read, but more abstract,12) the current map reflects the needs of the 11.5 million people who ride the subway each week13 by making it more geographically correct. To accommodate the ever-growing population of the 24 million people in Shanghai, it is no surprise that Shanghai’s subway system is the longest in the world.14 With a vast 337 stations, the Shanghai subway system is about 341 miles long. The city of Shanghai stretches out to 2,448.1 square miles — that’s a little more than five times the size of New York City. One of the home cities of international design is undoubtedly Stockholm. Many Scandinavian countries boast themselves on their forward-thinking design, architecture and art. Stockholm’s subway, also called the tunnelbana, or tunnel rail in English follows suit. The map itself displays the three, rather choppy green, blue, and red lines in a very accurate geographical representation of the city/station layout. The green line represented the older trains used for special companies and people, the blue usually used for the newer trains and the red/orange trains were used to tell the different lines apart. But what makes the Stockholm subway system so amazing is that it “is said to be the world's longest art exhibit - 110 kilometers long.”16 Passing by graffitied walls and painted and lit up caverns in over 10 stations, the Stockholm subway system is filled with a sense of art and design, from it’s geographical and geometric map, to the stations themselves. Each city’s subway system and corresponding map fits the needs of the city’s people and its surroundings. Take for instance, Amsterdam. The transport system in Amsterdam is divided into rings around the central city. These rings, and the map in general, take into account the landscape. The map shows the obvious lines, but they also coexist with the geographical waterways and greened areas.15 For a city and culture so intertwined in nature and design, this transport system definitely shows that through its map design. London and the Tube map are no exception to this. Beck created a design that was so radical and new that it was just want the people of London needed. This allowed passengers to ride the train effortless by knowing only three things: “the start point of their journey, where they have to change lines and their destination.”17 In 1959, Beck gave up designing and redesigning the tube map to make it better each time. The commission dumped Beck and his works in place for the head of the publicity department for the Tube, Harold F. Hutchinson’s “design.” Giving up on his dream and love affair with the map(s) he had created, Beck was furious that this new map looked very similar to his own.18 He felt betrayed and like his work was taken from him only to be used by someone else who had left him uncredited. Harry Beck’s electrical-board map design was something so constitutive and almost organic that it changed the way Londoners and tourists alike get around the bustling and crowded city. London's Underground map and legacy lives on, not only as one of the most popular and recognized maps in the world, but also as a shining example of brilliant graphic design. Sources 1, 5 Billson, C. (n.d.). A History of the London 11, 12 Byrnes, M. (2011, September 30). The Tube Maps. Retrieved May 14, 2015, from World's Best Subway Maps. Retrieved May 2, http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clivebillson/ 2015, from http://www.citylab.com/design/ tube/tube.html#1908 2011/09/20-subway-maps/227/#slide8 2, 6 Toor, A. (2013, March 29). Meet Harry 13 Introduction to Subway Ridership. (n.d.). Beck, the genius behind London's iconic Retrieved May 12, 2015, from http:// subway map. Retrieved May 14, 2015, from web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ http://www.theverge.com/ 2013/3/29/4160028/harry-beck-designer-of- 14 Shanghai now the world's longest metro. iconic-london-underground-map (2010, May 4). Retrieved May 14, 2015, from http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single- 3, 8 Beck, Henry (Harry). (n.d.). Retrieved view/view/shanghai-now-the-worlds-longest- May 3, 2015, from http://www. metro.html 20thcenturylondon.org.uk/beck-henry-harry 15 Byrnes, M. (2011, September 30). The 4, 7 Harry Beck's Tube map. (n.d.). Retrieved World's Best Subway Maps. Retrieved May 2, April 8, 2015, from http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ 2015, from http://www.citylab.com/design/ corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/art- 2011/09/20-subway-maps/227/#slide13 and-design/harry-becks-tube-map 16 Art in the subway.
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