How the WMATA Rush+ Maps Are Printed
Many thanks to Matt Johnson for telling me about this amazing photoset on Flickr that details the process involved in printing the new Rush+ station maps for Washington, DC’s Metro system. Click through to see the whole set!
Even as an experienced graphic designer, I was amazed to see that the maps are screen printed - each colour on the map is printed one after the other, each using a separate screen with its own spot colour ink. With a map as complex as this, that means that there are a whopping twelve different colours to print! These being: river blue, park green, National Mall green, Blue Line, Orange Line, Yellow Line, Green Line, Red Line, Silver Line, District/County border grey, Beltway grey, and finally, black.
I would have thought with the advances in digital printing and stochastic (micro) screening, that these could be produced digitally in one step instead of twelve, but maybe these are special long-lasting UV inks that will withstand many years of use without fading - an important consideration for station maps! In any case, these photos are a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a process that many people may not even think about.
EDIT: A tweet from a Metro representative confirms that there are THIRTEEN colours used in the printing: 4 greys (Silver Line, Beltway grey, county border grey, and icon grey), 3 greens (parks, Mall, Green Line), 2 Blues (river, Blue Line), Black, Red, Yellow and Orange.
Here are some photos from this morning’s Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge ceremony celebrating Atlanta Gas Light’s achievements on the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center.
Through participation in the Atlanta BBC, the Atlanta Civic Center has already created 89 jobs, and has saved the all-electric facility $93,000 in utility costs of the past six months (and it is projected to save the City $200,000 annually.)
Keep up the great work in making our city center more sustainable!
Predictions that the civic center might be on its way to being mothballed were apparently premature, as the city chose “fix up” rather than “tear down.”
With everything else going on (and not going on) in that corner of Bedford Pine, there’s not a lot to indicate that the neighborhood’s turnaround is imminent. Preparing the civic center for more years of use will at least head off the creation of yet another vacant building or lot - something in plentiful supply just to the north and south of the civic center site.
good:
I always wondered why it was so difficult for drivers to just pay attention and not be assholes. Then I moved to Los Angeles and got a car. Here, we do not operate our vehicles so much as we hang out in them. Hunkered in my sedan, I’m now comfortable juggling an iced coffee and the radio dial while “courtesy” honking the car in front of me. Only when I jump back on my bicycle do I become a little bit scared about the person that I become when I’m behind the wheel.
What Drivers Really Think About Bikers: The History and Psychology of Sharing the Road
Quote from the article:
A particularly troubling phenomenon in traffic psychology is the “looked-but-failed-to-see” collision—drivers are so accustomed to only looking out for other cars on the road that even if they look in a cyclist’s direction, their mind doesn’t register the biker. And this problem only gets worse the more experience a driver has on the road.
I’m riding a bike again for the first time in six years. The kind of selective blindness he describes goes a long way toward explaining why, during almost every ride, someone will pull out of a driveway or start making a left turn as if I’m not even there.
Replacement of the 88-year old Mitchell Street bridge is inching toward completion. Georgia DOT’s summer construction project list says that the new bridge has “a good chance” of opening ahead of its scheduled time, but the original press release projected a May 2012 completion date.
The new bridge will be built with sidewalks, a bike lane on the north side and parking on the south side.
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I’ve gone in or out of this station at least 10 times every week for more than two years now. Yet only after having taken this photo did I realize that something’s just a liiiiiitle bit off with that sign.
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Hey, everyone! I’m thrilled to be able to share some news with you that I just heard about! My U.S. Highways as Subway Map has been accepted for inclusion in the inaugural edition of the NACIS Atlas of Design. There were 150 entries, and only 27 maps - all by different creators - have been accepted, so you can see why I’m excited about this!
The Atlas itself promises to be superb, as evidenced by this excerpt from the project website:
The Atlas will feature a gallery of full-color maps showcasing cartography at its most beautiful, its cleverest, its sharpest, and its most intriguing. But it will be more than a museum of images; each map will be accompanied by thoughtful commentary that guides the reader toward a deeper understanding of the work: its inspiration and message, the ways it means to influence us. It is well to look upon something beautiful and good, but once we understand how it is beautiful and good, our experience becomes much richer. For those of us who make maps, we can carry those lessons into our own work and advance the craft of cartography. Even if you don’t make maps, it’s a chance to gain insight into what mapmakers really do, and to see how it’s about more than just pushing city dots and rivers around. Everyday objects become much more significant when we see what is behind their creation.
I can’t wait to see the other maps! For those of you unfamiliar with my work, here’s a link to the map’s project page on my personal website, as well as a link to a big (4000px wide!) version of the map on Flickr - the best way to appreciate all the fine detail.
Has Atlanta embraced modernism? A recap of our panel discussion
From the post:
Whether Atlanta will ever fully embrace a modernist attitude, everyone agreed the city is evolving. The recent upswing in urban living, new technologies and materials, and economic difficulties have pushed Atlantans in new directions. The interesting question is where do we go from here?
Read Betsy Riley’s full recap, view more photos, and peruse tweets from the evening
Photographs by Caroline C. Kilgore
Debit cards temporarily still useless at 7 MARTA stations | ajc.com
The train arrival time boards are also “temporarily still useless” at every station I’ve been in for at least the past two weeks except Five Points.
Posted May 14, 2012 at 3:15am
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Metro Logos of the World
Slightly tangential to my usual posts, but cool nonetheless. The Metrobits.org website showcases around 170 Metro logos (and other train systems as well - Sydney’s CityRail is most decidedly not a Metro, but is shown) all one page. As you might expect, there’s a lot of variations on the letter “M”!
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The supermoon view over the Atlantic Ocean from the pier at St. Simons Island, Georgia. Cinco de Mayo, 2012.
(via likethedew)
![theatlantic:
The Invention of Jaywalking
Despite remarkable recent gains in pedestrian safety – thanks in part to design changes aimed at slowing down drivers – cars still jump the curb nearly every day. Drivers who kill or maim pedestrians with their vehicles are still only rarely treated as criminals in New York, as long as they are not drunk and do not flee the scene. Even that is sometimes not enough to merit serious charges. […]
It wasn’t always like this. Browse through New York Times accounts of pedestrians dying after being struck by automobiles prior to 1930, and you’ll see that in nearly every case, the driver is charged with something like “technical manslaughter.” And it wasn’t just New York. Across the country, drivers were held criminally responsible when they killed or injured people with their vehicles.
So what happened? And when?
According to Peter Norton, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, the change is no accident (so to speak). He has done extensive research into how our view of streets was systematically and deliberately shifted by the automobile industry, as was the law itself.
“If you ask people today what a street is for, they will say cars,” says Norton. “That’s practically the opposite of what they would have said 100 years ago.”
Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: Library of Congress]
An illustration of the bolded quote: Last summer I was at Marietta Street and Peachtree when someone drove his car right into the crosswalk as people were trying to use it to cross the street. One of the people crossing the street said something to the driver to the effect that his car shouldn’t be in the crosswalk and that he could have killed someone. He responded “Well, if you’d get your ass out of the street that wouldn’t happen!”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m302uyzrIV1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
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Despite remarkable recent gains in pedestrian safety – thanks in part to design changes aimed at slowing down drivers – cars still jump the curb nearly every day. Drivers who kill or maim pedestrians with their vehicles are still only rarely treated as criminals in New York, as long as they are not drunk and do not flee the scene. Even that is sometimes not enough to merit serious charges. […]
It wasn’t always like this. Browse through New York Times accounts of pedestrians dying after being struck by automobiles prior to 1930, and you’ll see that in nearly every case, the driver is charged with something like “technical manslaughter.” And it wasn’t just New York. Across the country, drivers were held criminally responsible when they killed or injured people with their vehicles.
So what happened? And when?
According to Peter Norton, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, the change is no accident (so to speak). He has done extensive research into how our view of streets was systematically and deliberately shifted by the automobile industry, as was the law itself.
“If you ask people today what a street is for, they will say cars,” says Norton. “That’s practically the opposite of what they would have said 100 years ago.”
Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: Library of Congress]
An illustration of the bolded quote: Last summer I was at Marietta Street and Peachtree when someone drove his car right into the crosswalk as people were trying to use it to cross the street. One of the people crossing the street said something to the driver to the effect that his car shouldn’t be in the crosswalk and that he could have killed someone. He responded “Well, if you’d get your ass out of the street that wouldn’t happen!”
