Making sense of maps Aris Venetikidis

what I do is I organize information I’m

a graphic designer

professionally I try to make sense often

of things that don’t make much sense

themselves so my father might not

understand what it is that I do for a

living his part of my ancestry has been

farmers his part of this ethnic minority

called the Pontic Greeks they lived in

Asia Minor and fled to Greece after

genocide about a hundred years ago and

ever since that migration has somewhat

been a theme in my family my father

moved to Germany studied there and

married and as a result I now have this

half German brain with all the

analytical thinking and that slight

dorky demeanor that come with that and

of course it meant that I was a

foreigner in both countries and that of

course made it pretty easy for me to

migrate as well and good family

tradition if you like but of course most

journeys that we undertake from day to

day are within a city and especially if

you know the city getting from A to B

may seem pretty obvious right but the

question is why is it obvious how do we

know where we’re going

so I washed up on a Dublin ferry port

about 12 years ago a professional

foreigner if you like and I’m sure

you’ve all had this experience before

yeah you have I arrived in a new city

and your brain is trying to make sense

of this new place once you find your

base your home you start to build this

cognitive map of your environment it’s

essentially this virtual map that only

exists in your brain all animal species

do it even though we all use slightly

different tools those humans of course

we don’t move around marking our

territory by scents like dogs we don’t

run around emitting ultrasonic squeaks

Batz we just don’t do that although a

night in the temp of our district can

get pretty well no and we do two

important things to make a place our own

first we move along linear routes

typically we find a main street and this

Main Street becomes a linear strip map

in our minds but our mind keeps it

pretty simple yeah every street is

generally perceived as a straight line

and we kind of ignore the little twists

and turns that the streets make when we

do however make a turn into a side

street our mind tends to adjust that

turn to a 90-degree angle this of course

makes for some funny moments when you’re

in some old city layouts that for that

follows some sort of circular city logic

yeah maybe you’ve had that experience as

well right let’s say you are on some

spot on a side street that projects from

a main Cathedral Square and you want to

get to another point on a side street

just like that the cognitive map in your

mind may tell you eros go back to the

main cathedral square take a 90-degree

turn and walk down that other side

street but somehow you feel adventurous

that day and you suddenly discover that

the two spots were actually only a

single building apart now don’t know

about you but I always feel like I find

this wormhole or or this

interdimensional portal so we move along

linear routes and our mind straightened

streets and perceives turns as 90-degree

angles the second thing that we do to

make a place our own is we attach

meaning and emotions to the things that

we see along those along those lines if

you go to the Irish countryside and you

ask an old lady for directions brace

yourself for some elaborate Irish

storytelling about all the landmarks

yeah she’ll tell you the pub where her

sister used to work and go past that

church where I got married that kind of

thing so we fill our cognitive maps with

these markers of meaning what’s more

we the abstract repeat patterns and

recognize them we recognize them by the

experiences and we abstract them into

symbols and of course we’re all capable

of understanding these symbols what’s

more we’re all capable of understanding

the cognitive maps and you are all

capable of creating these cognitive maps

yourselves so next time when you want to

tell your friend how to get to your

place you grab a beer mat grab a napkin

and you just observe yourself create

this awesome piece of communication

design it’s got straight lines

it’s got 90 degree corners you might add

little symbols along the way and when

you look at what you’ve just drawn you

realize it does not resemble a street

map if you were to put an actual street

map on top of what you’ve just drawn

you’d realize your streets and the

distances they’d be way off know what

you’ve just drawn is more like a dry

gram or earth or a schematic it’s a

visual construct of lines dots letters

design in the language of our brains so

it’s no big surprise that the big

information design icon of the last

century the pinnacle of showing

everybody how to get from A to B the

London Underground map was not designed

by a cartographer or a city planner it

was designed by an engineering draftsmen

in the 1930s Harry Beck applied the

principles of schematic diagram design

and changed the way public transport

maps are designed forever

now the very key to the success of this

map is in the omission of important less

important information and in the extreme

simplification so straighten streets

corners of 90 and 45 degrees but also

the extreme Geographic distortion in

that map if you were to look at

the actual locations of these stations

you see they’re very different yeah but

this is all for the clarity of the

public cubemap yeah if you say wanted to

get from regents park station to Great

Portland Street the Tube map would tell

you take the tube go to Baker Street

change over take another tube of course

what you don’t know is that the two

stations are only about 100 meters apart

now we’ve reached the subject of public

transport and public transport here in

Dublin is this somewhat touchy subject

for everybody who does not know the

public transport here in Dublin

essentially we have the system of local

buses that grew with the city for every

outskirt that was added there was

another bus route added running from the

outskirt all the way to the city centre

and as these local buses approached the

city centre

they all run side by side and converge

and pretty much one Main Street so when

I stopped stepped off the boat 12 years

ago I try to make sense of that because

exploring a city on foot only gets you

so far but when you explore a foreign

and new public transport system you will

build a cognitive map in your mind in

pretty much the same way typically you

choose yourself a rapid transport route

and in your mind this route is perceived

as a straight line and like a pearl

necklace all the stations and stops and

are nicely and neatly aligned along the

along the line and only then you start

to discover some local bus routes that

would fill in the gaps and that allow

you for those wormhole interdimensional

portal shortcuts so I try to make sense

and when I arrived I was looking for

some information leaflets that would

help me crack this system and understand

it and I found those brochures

they were not geographically distorted

they were having a lot of omission of

information but unfortunately the wrong

information say in the city center there

were never actually any lines that

showed the roots they’re actually not

even any stations with names now the

lines the the maps of Dublin transport

have gotten better and after I finished

the project they got a good a good bit

better but still no station names still

no routes so being naive and being half

German I decided Aris why don’t you

build your own map so that’s what I did

I researched how each and every bus

route moved through the city nice and

logical every bus route a separate line

and I plotted it into my own map of

Dublin and in the city centre I got a

nice spaghetti place

now this is a bit of a mess so I I

decided of course you’re going to apply

the rules of schematic design clearing

up the corridors widening the streets

where there were loads of buses and

making the streets at straight 90-degree

corners 45-degree corners of fractions

of that and filled it in with the bus

routes and I built a city center bus map

of the system how it was five years ago

as women again so that you get the full

impact of the keys and the Westmoreland

Street now I can proudly say

I can proudly say as the public

transport map this diagram is an otter

failure except probably in one aspect I

now had a great visual representation of

just how clogged up and overrun the city

centre really was now call me

old-fashioned right but I think a public

transport route map should have lines

because that’s what they are yeah there

are little pieces of string that wrap

their way through the city center or

through the city if you will the Greek

guy inside of me feels if I don’t get a

line it’s like entering the labyrinth of

the Minotaur without having Ariadne

giving you the string to find your way

so the outcome of my academic research

loads of questionnaires case studies and

looking at a lot of maps was that a lot

of the problems and shortcomings of the

public transport system here in Dublin

was the lack of a coherent public

transport map a simplified coherent

public transport map because I think

this is the crucial step to

understanding public transport network

on a physical level but it’s also the

crucial step to make a public transport

network mapable on a visual level so I

teamed up with a gentleman called James

Lee he a civil engineer and recent

masters graduate of sustainable

development program at di T and together

we drafted the simplified model network

which I could then go ahead and

visualize so here’s what we did we

distributed these rapid transport

corridors throughout the city center and

extended them into the outskirts wrap it

because we wanted them to be served by

rapid transport vehicles yeah

they would get exclusive road news were

possible and it would be high quantity

high quality transport James wanted to

use bus rapid transport for that rather

than light rail for me it was important

that the vehicles that would run on

those bus those rapid transport

corridors would be visibly distinct

vegetable from local buses on the street

now we could take out all the local

buses that ran alongside those rapid

transport means any gaps that appeared

in the outskirts were filled again so in

other words if there was a street in an

outskirt where there had been a bus we

put a bus back in only now these buses

wouldn’t run all the way to the city

center but connect to the nearest rapid

transport mode one of these thick lines

over there so the rest was merely a

couple of months of work and a couple of

fights with my girlfriend’s of our place

constantly being clogged up with maps

and the outcome one of the outcomes was

this map of the Greater Dublin area has

oom in a little bit

this map only shows the rapid transport

connections no local bus very much in

the metros map style that was so

successful in London and that since has

been exported to so many other major

cities and therefore is the language

that we should use for public transport

maps what’s also important is with a

simplified network like this it now

would become possible for me to tackle

the ultimate challenge and make a public

transport map for the city centre one

where I wouldn’t just show rapid

transport connections but also all the

local bus routes streets and the likes

and this is what a map like this could

look like I’ll zoom in a little bit in

this map I’m including each transport

mode so rapid transport both dart tram

and the lights each each individual

route is represent represented by a

separate line the map shows each and

every station each and every station

name and I’m also display displaying

side streets in fact most of the side

streets even with their name and for

good measure also a couple of landmarks

some of them

fight by little symbols others by these

isometric three-dimensional

bird’s-eye-view drawings the map is

relatively small and over all sides so

something that you could still hold as a

fold-out map or display in a reasonably

sized display box on a bus shelter I

think it tries to be the the best

balance between actual representation

and simplification the language of

wayfinding in our brain so straightened

lines cleaned up corners and of course

that very very important Geographic

distortion that makes public transport

maps possible if you for example have a

look at the two main corridors that run

through the city the yellow and orange

one over here this is how they look in a

in an actual accurate Street map and

this is how they would look in my

distorted simplified public transport

map so for successful public transport

map we should not stick to accurate

representation but design them in the

way our brains work the reactions I got

were tremendous it was really good to

see and of course for my own self I was

very happy to see that my folks in

Germany and Greece

finally have an idea what I do for a

living