Animals on the Underground, a collection of line-art animals discovered within the London tube map.
The animals, created using the tube lines, stations and junctions of the London Underground map were first spotted by Paul Middlewick in 1988. The original animal, the elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey home from work. Since then, the elephant has been joined by many others from bats to bottlenose whales.
There are more than thirty animals so far, maybe you can find another one?
Axis Maps has released a Typographic Maps art project, which accurately depicts the physical features of the cities using nothing but type. So far, they’ve only created maps of Boston and Chicago, but I imagine there will be more down the road. Their blog entry has a few additional details about the process, including the fact that they were created through manual tracing and adjustment, nothing automated.
Oskar Karlin reworked the infamous London Underground map using the time it takes to travel between stations rather than the distance.
A Typeface for the Underground takes an in-depth look at the history of the Johnston typeface used by Transport for London. You might also be interested in Ken Garland’s book, Mr Beck’s Underground map, detailing the history of a design icon.
The World Digital Library provides a significant number “primary materials” free of charge to the general public. This includes maps, manuscripts and other ephemera to promote intercultural understanding.
London: A Life in Maps. A great collection from the British Library, I had the chance to see them in person while I was there last year.
Europa Polyglotta, a cool map from 1730, indicating the languages spoken in Europe and full of typographic goodness.
Cutting edge maps, very cool cutouts
Motorway map of England, in the style of Harry Beck’s London Underground map.
