The Tube map, also called the London Underground map, is a simplified map of the London Underground’s lines, stations, and services. The London Underground is more commonly called “the Tube,” which is where the name of the map comes from. In 1931, Harry Beck designed the first schematic Tube map. It has since been expanded to include the Docklands Light Railway, London Overground, Elizabeth line, Tramlink, London Cable Car, and Thameslink.
As a schematic diagram, it depicts the relative positions of the stations, lines, connective relationships between stations, and fare zones as opposed to their actual geographic locations. The fundamental design principles have been widely adopted for other such maps throughout the world, as well as for maps of other types of transportation networks and conceptual diagrams.
The map is updated frequently and is available on the official Transport for London website. Along with the Concorde, Mini, Supermarine Spitfire, K2 telephone box, World Wide Web, and AEC Routemaster bus, the Tube map was named one of Britain’s top ten design icons in 2006. Art on the Underground has commissioned artists to create pocket Tube map covers since 2004.
Beck’s maps
In 1931, Harry Beck drew the first diagrammatic map of London’s rapid transit system.
He was an employee of the London Underground who realised that, because the railway ran primarily underground, the physical locations of the stations were largely irrelevant to a traveller who wanted to know how to get from one station to another; only the topology of the route mattered. Although electrical circuit diagrams did not inspire Beck’s map, their methodology is comparable. When his coworkers pointed out the similarities, he created a joke map with electrical circuit symbols and names for the stations, such as “Bakelite” for the Bakerloo line.
Beck created a simple map containing only stations, straight lines connecting them, and the River Thames for this purpose. The lines only went up, down, or diagonally 45 degrees. Beck distinguished between regular stations, denoted by checkmarks, and interchange stations, denoted by diamonds. This clarified the map and highlighted the connections. The London Underground was initially sceptical of his 1933 proposal, which was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet, because it was an uncommissioned hobby project. However, it quickly gained popularity, and since then, topological maps have been used to depict the Underground’s network.
Despite the complexity of the map, Beck was paid only ten guineas for the card edition’s artwork and design. He continued to design the Tube map until 1960, with the exception of a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger. In order to accommodate new lines and stations, Beck modified the design by changing the interchange symbol from a diamond to a circle and the line colours of the Central line from orange to red and the Bakerloo line from red to brown. The 1960 final design by Beck is strikingly similar to the current map. Beck was raised in Finchley, North London, and one of his maps remains on the Northern line southbound platform at Finchley Central station.
Beck’s significance was recognised posthumously in 1997, and beginning in 2022, the following statement will be printed on every Tube map: “This diagram is an evolution of the 1931 design conceived by Harry Beck.”
After Beck
Beck feuded with the Underground’s publicity officer, Harold Hutchison, who drew his version of the Tube map in 1960 despite not being a designer. It eliminated Beck’s rounded corners, resulting in highly congested areas (particularly around Liverpool Street station) and generally less straight lines. Hutchison, on the other hand, introduced interchange symbols (circles for Underground-only services and squares for connections with British Rail mainline services) that were black and allowed multiple lines to pass through, in contrast to Beck, who used a different coloured circle for each line at an interchange.
In 1964, Paul Garbutt, who, like Beck, had designed a map in his spare time because he disliked the Hutchison design, assumed responsibility for the map’s design. Garbutt’s map reinstated the diagram’s curves and bends while preserving Hutchison’s black interchange circles; however, squares were replaced with circles containing a dot. Garbutt continued to create Underground maps for at least twenty more years. The designer’s name was removed from Tube maps in 1986, when the map’s elements closely resembled those of the current map. The “London’s Railways” map, published in 1973, was the first to depict Tube and aboveground mainline rail services in a diagrammatic style closely resembling Beck’s designs. This version was created by Tim Demuth of the London Transport publicity office and was co-sponsored by British Rail and London Transport. Instead of replacing the standard Tube map, Demuth’s map was published as a supplement and subsequently dubbed the “London Connections” map.
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