Jed Hanson

Clapham Common Tube station now has pictures of cats instead of ads!

We seriously couldn’t love this anymore! After raising £23,000 ($30,526) on Kickstarter the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (C.A.T.S) have achieved their goal of replacing every single advert in a London tube station with pictures of cats!

Submission – Maps from the 1977 “Golden Gate Transit Guide”, showing South Marin and Larkspur Ferry Bus Services

Submitted by Denis Agar, who says:

Check out the Marin County transit maps on page 110 of this thesis (source below). They’re so distinct! Maybe you’ve seen them but I couldn’t NOT send you these. Vignelli much?

Transit Maps says:

I haven’t seen these before, Denis – and you’re right: they’re absolutely fantastic. I feel that the mid- to late-1970s was a time when America actually embraced clean, modernist “European” design, especially on the West Coast. So, while I can see some Vignellian influences – “one dot, one stop” especially – I think these maps are also very much a product of the time and place they were created. I doubt that Vignelli would have appreciated the use of non-standard angles or the literal pictorial depictions of the ferries to San Francisco.

Of the two maps, I think the South Marin one is more effective: a brighter colour palette and a logical order to the diagram makes it a little better, in my opinion. The Larkspur map gets a little too clever with the “roundabout” device used to represent urban areas, and the Route 29 Canal line seems unnecessarily convoluted and cramped for space. I do like the representation of the Larkspur Ferry Terminal’s iconic triangular space frame roof, which was then only a year old.

Our rating: Lovely little diagrammatic maps, very evocative of the time and place they were made. Four stars!