Tubular bells and whistles

We're currently looking around for some artwork to jolly up our rather minimalist office walls. All information designers are obsessed by Beck's London tube map – it's practically an interview question: 'how much do you love Beck's tube map?' – and so we've been looking around for alternatives to the ubiquitous Great Bear poster.

While hunting around for tube maps, it's clear that Beck's creation now has its own ever-expanding subculture. I remember looking at Animals on the Underground (where people identify animal shapes from the tube map) a long time ago and there was little there. Now there's rhinos, puppies and seals galore.

This is potentially a more useful variation, if less fun: someone has identified all the tube connections where it's quicker to walk between stations than take the tube, and created a map with walklines. As the guy himself says, it's a little cluttered but a handy reference (similar to this famous book, The Way Out Tube Map, which tells you where to stand on the train to make the quickest possible exit).

The idea of the map as an evolving work of art is so widely recognised that you can even do a quiz to find out which version of the map you are. I'm a Beck classic, which I'm very pleased about.

Here's a lovely idea, which has apparently taken off around the world: this site, Living in a tube map, encourages you to take photos around your local tube station and upload them, where they can be accessed via an interactive map. It means that if you've always wondered what Pimlico looks like, or whether you can see the stadium from Wembley Central, you can take a look.

Once you've started investigating this subculture, it's strangely addictive. I'm blaming hundreds of students, all of whom have had the same bright idea for an assignment. Here's Shakespeare as a tube map, for instance, which I'm sure started off as an undergraduate piece. And this map shows you which tube stations have bloggers nearby – again I'm sure someone had too much time on their hands.

Finally, another nice idea. This map morphs depending on which station you click on to show you how long it takes to get to all the other stations on the map. Have a play: it's a bit like teasing a sea anemone.

Want more? This guy's blog has a much better list than this, including a map that shows where all the toilets are. But beware if you're tempted to keep searching for more: like the underground itself, it's sometimes hard to know where to get off...

It used to be so much easier...

This is a lovely story from the bbc. There's a new edition of the Highway Code out, so they've excavated the original version from 1931.

Suffice to say clear instructions were not deemed necessary for the (presumably limited, and wealthy) readership of the day. I'm particularly fond of this advice: 'Never take a risk in the hope or expectation that everyone else will do what is necessary to avoid the consequences of your rashness'. I can't help feeling that our clarion imperatives ('THINK!') lose a little eloquence in comparison, even if they are more effective.

Here's the article.

Info design in The West Wing

I'm currently revisiting an old series of the West Wing, and found a nice reference to the power of information design - or at least map design.

It's this episode, Somebody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail. The (geeky) Organisation of Cartographers for Social Equality turn up at the White House, much to the derision of all. But when they put forward their case for using the Gall-Peters projection of the world in schools, rather than the Mercator projection, the cynical White House staff are astonished - and not a little freaked out. There's a nice discussion of the issue on the wikipedia entry.

According to the wikipedia site (referencing the fan site), sales for the Gall-Peters projection went up from 3 per day to 120 per day following the episode.

Smoking in style

Our thanks to our friend Cara for these wonderful posters from Japan - how to smoke politely. I'm particularly fond of the 'cigarette as love affaire' one.
Lots and lots more posters here

A poster for our office?

Mark spotted this recently - potential artwork for our rather bare office walls?

If you like it too, you can buy it here.

Entering the blogosphere

Welcome to and/or/if's very own blog.

The four of us have been pinging emails between each other for more time than we care to remember. Some of which are unrepeatable, but a good number of which may be of interest to other people interested in all things info design-y. So we'll be trying to remember to post all kinds of interesting stuff and nonsense here.
Here's a little starter for ten: we've all been eagerly anticipating the launch of the iPhone over here (of course we'll all need one for important professional reasons). But folks in the States, who can already get their sticky fingers on them, are beginning to wish they'd switched off their itemisations:
iPhone bill: the movie
Another cross blog
And another

You've got to ask: who at AT&T failed to spot what was going on? Didn't someone in the enveloping site, watching box after box of 300-page bills thunk squarely onto the straining floor, at some point ask the question? We know of similar things happening over here with BlackBerry billing, but the crazy bills were spotted and solved quicksmart.

PS credit for our blog title goes to Mark by the way. He was very keen for it to be our company strapline, but we wussed out. But our blog seemed like a good place to embrace our inner Wombles.