Gary Gale

This is post number six in the ongoing #mapgasm series of posts on maps found on the interwebs that I like. Yes, it's another map. Yes, it's another Tube map. I make no apologies for this.

A simple map is often a good map. Cutting away cartographical clutter can reveal the heart of what a map is trying to show. But sometimes you can maybe take the map pruning just a little bit too far. Take the map of the London Underground; surely one of the simplest and more effective maps there is. Surely there's not much scope for making it any simpler?

I've said it before, many times, but I'm a 100% un-reconstructed map addict and make no apology for it. I've said this in posts I've written on this blog as well as using it as part of my introduction for talks at conferences. This post is a slightly more long winded version of why I am the map addict that I am.

I grew up in the suburbs of London. For as long as I can remember, every week day morning my father picked up his briefcase and walked to the local British Rail station (for this was way before the privatisation of the British rail network) and went to the fantastical place, to a child's mind at least, called Central London where he worked. He went there on a train. Which was amazing and wonderful to me at the time. I knew he worked in Central London because he had a book of maps of all the streets in Central London. It was old, dog-eared and probably out of date but it made the journey to and from work with him every day and I used to look at it in the evenings, after he'd come home for the day. This mystical and wondrous book was called the London A-Z. It looked something like this.