Finding Contrast on the London Underground Map

On a recent trip to the London Underground I found myself searching a map for my bearings. What I needed was a 'you are here' pin pointer, but the complex underground map did not provide one.

Today, I started thinking about how the map could best accommodate this symbol.

The one big criteria here is that we don't simplify the rest of the map, since we need that information. This swiftly removes many options for providing a symbol. Colour, for example, can not be used to highlight the pointer since the map already heavily utilises so many colours. Any big arrows or such like would also cause issues since we don't want to cover any station names or parts of the track.

The circle

I opted for a semi-transparent circle which holds the current location at its centre. The transparency ensures that no important information gets covered up, and we forgo any useless 'you are here' text which would cause clarity issues with this design.

A circle is particularly clear because everything else on the map uses straight lines. The only other circles (or indeed circular shapes) on the map are small symbols such as the one for interchange stations. On a treasure map an 'X' might mark the spot; this would be a superior choice since that map would contain fewer straight lines. The key here is contrast: to make something stand out, some dimension of it has to be different from the rest of the design.

fig 1: A circle provides contrast against so many straight lines, and therefore stands out. However, it also exacerbates the existing information-pollution issue.

Issues

So have I improved on the design of the map? No. There are two problems.

One: despite what I said above about not wanting to alter the original map, the original map could do with a clean-up operation. It is full of pointless information junk that distracts more than it informs. This is probably a consequence of designing the display with too little regard for context and the user.

Designing with little consideration for context is the second problem. In my alteration I have simply taken a single viewpoint (my own during an isolated incident). I have also not considered how it would work when printed large and hung on a wall in the station.

But that takes time, and I have at least demonstrated my point about contrast.