Tube Map Sticky Tape!

tapeline

Now this is just excellent – it’s a roll of tape with a custom-designed map of the London Underground (and DLR & Overground) on it. It’s produced by the Seoul-based designers Jin Sol and Kim Ji-hwan, who make up the studio ZeroPerZero.

tapeboxI particularly like this “1.5D” take on the familiar tube map. Constrained by the tape’s natural shape (i.e. long and thin), the designer had to construct a map where essentially all the lines run in one direction, while still including the intricate topological connections that are the key part of a tube map. It’s not quite one dimensional – that would be impossible for a multi-line map – but the second dimension is certainly constrained.

The design is a custom one, rather than being an “official” map repurposed. Colours vary slightly from the traditional ones, and all stations are shown with circlar dots – of different sizes depending on their importance. Lozenges make up interchanges – with the name of the station inside them for the major ones. Major above-ground London landmarks are included in gold – the London Eye, St Paul’s Cathedral etc. Lines bend back on themselves resulting in sometimes dramatic geographical distortions. Nothing as extreme as Francisco’s map – this map is intended for practical use as well as novelty.

The big question of course is what do you do with a roll of tube map tape? Well this will be ideal for wrapping presents for my more technical-minded friends, or alternatively sticking it in a notebook or maybe on a workdesk as a handy reference – here’s the desk of one half of Mapping London:

tapedesk

Thank you Steve for tipping me off about this, and ZeroPerZero for sending me a review copy, all the way from Seoul! (I also got a bonus roll with the Manhattan part of the New York City Subway system.)

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