For those of us who are obsessed with LOST, Tuesday night’s Season 6 premiere has been a long time coming. And so in a week dominated here by discussions of subway maps, I present to you the LOST subway map. Called the Dharma Rapid Transit system by creator John Cabrera, the map is a great representation of that all has happened on the island over the previous five seasons. John explains the origins of the map here on his site. Click the image above to enlarge; you’ll have to see the full-sized image for all of the detail. For the Losties among us, this one’s a keeper.

Baseball fans who go to enough games grow family with the old concessionaire’s adage. You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, the saying goes. Similarly, a subway rider generally can’t navigate the the subway system without a map. Someone going from Point A to Point B needs to know the best way to get there, but how?

Yesterday afternoon, in a discussion on the recent history of New York City’s subway, a discussion broke out on the best way to present a subway system. Should the map be purely schematic and assume that people know the above-ground geometry? Should the map integrate the subway system on a near-accurate geographical representation of the city it services? As New Yorkers used to the geographically integrated subway system, we view those schematic maps suspiciously.

Up above is a thumbnail of our familiar New York City map. Click it to enlarge. As it stands right now, this map has a lot of information on it, and most of it is unnecessary. Boxes about bus connections — with no further information — ring the map, and lines emerge from major subway stops. Staten Island has been moved to abut Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the box in the lower right corner attempts to explain which trains run when. Rush hour, weekdays, evenings, weekends, late nights: read the key and then find your line. It’s almost a game.

Meanwhile, this map also incorporates almost the geography of New York City. Some major through streets are marked, and some — but not all — parks show up on it. As The Local noted a few months ago, Fort Greene Park is nowhere to be found, but the smaller Washington Square Park is front and center near the W 4th St. stop. For those not familiar with New York City, our subway map simply doesn’t help above ground even as it tries to. It makes distances look shorter than they are and omits some landmarks while including others. It’s an approximation of the city at best.

Moving out of the city, we arrive in London to find an entirely different concept of the subway map. The current Tube map, an evolution of a design by Harry Beck, is a diagrammatic map of the Underground. It bears little resemblance to the actual geography of the city and instead presents the system as a series of zones with subway lines running in straight lines or at 45-degree angles. Sparse and simple, it has become a widely recognized symbol of London.

This map helps those who know where they’re going and few others. It gives no indication about distances between stations or about what might be around each station. It’s sometimes better to get off at an early station to reach a destination with a name similar to the next stop, but only those in the know would actually know that. It might look good; it might lend itself to easy imitation; and it might make navigating the subway system itself simple. But it provides no integration into the city.

Since Beck’s design arrived in London, derivatives have become the norm. Take, for example, a look at D.C.’s Metro map or Paris’ schematic. Angles, zones and sparse geographical markers rule the day while New York stands alone as a beacon of graphics design slowly, evolutionarily gone wrong.

So what’s the best map? Maybe New York’s old map — the one that used to show just the subways with a nod toward geography but an understanding that it wasn’t perfect — was the way to go. Vignelli’s map almost fits the bill, but navigating the subway system with it can be a Herculean task. Maybe we’re still just waiting for the right subway map, one that incorporates geography and complicated and convoluted subway systems into an easy-to-use map. Consider it the Holy Grail of subway mapmaking.

Have you seen the latest sunglasses in Ray-Ban’s Wayfarer line? The latest rare edition of Ray-Ban’s top-selling frame features an iconic image on the inside. We’ve seen dresses with the Vignelli map, and now sunglasses with our familiar schematic of the New York City subway system are available as well. Between the boxers for sale by the Transit Museum, the dress and these stylin’ glasses, a savvy New Yorker could don the subway map as an outfit.

The rare “NYC Subway” edition of these popular frames retail for just under $145, and they’re going fast. Bloomingdale’s has them for sale in blue, but most places are already sold out. Act quickly before they’re all gone. After the jump, another view. Read More→

In the annals of New York City subway history, nothing is more fetishized and analyzed than the Massimo Vignelli 1970s-era subway map. Over the last few years, I’ve written posts about Vignelli’s signage, an update to the Vignelli map and the Vignelli-inspired KickMap. I also own a handful of Vignelli maps from various years.

This latest find, though, takes the cake. As you can see, it is a dress with the Vignelli subway map reproduced on it. It is a silk piece part of the Francis New York spring collection. A buddy of mine found it at Nordstrom’s site where it is on sale for $249.90. My favorite part are the straps, each featuring a different Vignelli-colored subway line.

Click through for a view of the back. As today is July 3, mostly a day off from work, I won’t be posting much more. I’ll be back with the service advisories later today. Happy Fourth of July!

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To celebrate the city and offer up a way to carry a map in your pocket, a design firm in Korea has published a heart-shaped version of the New York City subway map.

The PSFK design blog has more about this one-of-a-kind map:

A group of Korean graphic designers called Zero Per Zero have a unique take on the typical subway map of New York City. Playing on the I Love New York logo, the entire system is visualized as a big heart. The final design was the 2008 Design For Asia Grand Award Winner for a City Railway System which seems a bit odd considering it’s a remake of an American system, but we certainly applaud the simplicity and beauty of their artistic vision.

This playful design actually functions as the map it remixes and on closer inspection, it includes pictorial representations of remarkable locations throughout the city. It’s great to see designers offer a new interpretation of such a recognizable map in a way that may even improve the mood of some of NYC’s grumpy commuters.

The map itself costs under $7 but shipping from South Korea pushes that total up to around $20. I think it’s well worth it for map collectors.

After the jump, a detail of the map, and remember that the subways are running on a Sunday schedule today. Allow extra time for travel, and have a Merry Christmas!

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