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Unofficial Map: Mexico City Metro by Richard Archambault

Following on from my previous post, here’s an unofficial map for the Mexico City Metro that makes full use of the Lance Wyman icons. It’s designed by Richard Archambault, who also works on the essential Jetpack for Wordpress.

As can be seen from the archival photo above, the Wyman design team explored a purely iconic treatment of the Metro map, apparently eschewing station names altogether. Admittedly, the system was much simpler back then, with only lines 1, 2 and 3 present in the mockup as shown on the wall.

As we know, the official map has since moved away from this approach and no longer features the icons at all. So what would a modern Mexico City Metro map that used icons look like? That’s what Richard’s map sets out to show, and it’s a surprising contrast to the disappointing official map. 

Richard has painstakingly vectorised all the icons (around 200 or so!) from the bitmap versions available on the STC’s website to use in the map, and I really appreciate the way that he’s made them big and bold – it’s certainly very evocative of Wyman’s original concept.

The “big and bold” approach almost forces the map into being more evenly spaced and less cramped in the centre of the map when compared to the official map – the icons always take up a certain amount of space, which in turn creates space around them. Richard also keeps his route lines as straight as possible, which suits the minimalist aesthetic of the map nicely. Yes, there’s some odd angles here and there, but I don’t really find them distracting in the context of the whole map. Richard also includes the Tren Ligero line in its entirety – nicely differentiated by placing its icons in circles – something the official map relegates to a vague arrow and caption.

The labelling of stations is perhaps a little pedestrian (a version with no labels at all like the Wyman concept would be interesting), and the line numbers at the end of each line could perhaps do with a little bit of differentiation from the station icons next to them. They’re the same size, shape and colour, and can be read as an extra station at first glance. Reducing them in size, or perhaps having them as white shapes with the text and a border stroke in the line colour could do the trick.

Best of all, Richard’s map has been featured in the new edition of Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World. Having gotten no response from the STC regarding inclusion of their official map, Mark reached out to Richard and basically commissioned him to update his map for use in the book. Awesome!

Our rating: Shows that an iconic approach to the Mexico City Metro is perfectly valid, and certainly produces a more attractive and usable map than the official one. Three stars!