going underground

I love maps as much as the next person.

Strike that. I love maps more than most people. Let me use the following examples to illustrate my point:

• Exhibit a: My bar is a 36-inch wooden globe covered in a 1789 Venetian map.
• Exhibit b: A Blaeu map adorns my living room.
• Exhibit c: My work mousepad is a map of the Paris Metro.
• Exhibit d: I have a magnet of the Tube, courtesy of Lynne.

Naturally, I loved learning about the variants on the London Underground map ...

Harry Beck's London Underground map is such a design icon that computerfolk are forever designing spoof versions. There's the marvellous upside-down South London version, for example, and the ingenious London motorways map.

The usual trick is to retain the real diagram and just change the names of all 275 stations instead. Simon Patterson was probably the first (in 1992) with his Great Bear, but since then the tube map has also gone foody, German, sweary, Hollywood and (just last week) ingeniously musical. There also one where each station name is replaced by an anagram.

Find tons more tube map variants at Geoff's place and Owen's site.
Via Diamond Geezer