Harry Beck - Inventor of the London Underground Tube Map

The map pictured above is the modern tube map, familiar to all who travel on the London Underground.   But it was a long and tortuous journey to reach such an iconic global design.

To begin with, cartographers created geographical representations of London for early Underground maps. This meant that they wanted to re-create the distances and directions above ground to the same extent below ground.  

A sense of relative distance and accurate direction were considered, with few exceptions, essential.

Additionally, London's landmarks were often included. So, whilst the suburbs were far apart, central London was represented as highly constricted with stations close together, confusing passengers.

By 1925 some difficulties were resolved, particularly by F. H. Stingemore's design. Here, outlying suburbs were compressed and surface detail eliminated, but central constriction remained problematic.

In 1931 Harry Beck, a 29-year-old unemployed engineering draughtsman, produced his first sketch of the Diagram which would become the well-loved map of the London Underground.

Having been made redundant from the Underground Group, Beck nevertheless made a presentation visual from this initial sketch and, in 1931 presented it to their Publicity Department. It was rejected as too 'revolutionary'.

Beck was re-employed by the Underground Group in 1932 and re-presented his Diagram. To his delight it was accepted and in January 1933 a first edition folding card of 750,000 was printed. It was an instant success, and big business for the new controlling authority, London Passenger Transport Board.

Beck was paid a meagre £10.50 for the design and artwork of the Diagram and a mere £5.25 for the subsequent poster artwork.

Important features of Harry Beck's London Underground diagram are:

• simplification  of route lines to verticals, horizontals or diagonals;
• expansion of central London area;
• like an electrical circuit diagram, it was schematic, not geographical (see illustration below)
• elimination  of all surface detail except the Thames.

Beck recognised that travellers underground have one aim - to get from one place to another. The traveller's mindset is restricted to this singular necessity. The commuter needs a diagram, not a traditional map, to reflect this need.

Beck's Diagram minimises the anxiety caused by underground travel.

One surface feature was incorporated into Beck's Diagram - the River Thames. Beck's biographer, Ken Garland, notes that in an informal questionnaire taken in 1968, all Tube travellers found the inclusion of the Thames a useful feature.

It remains a reassuring, organic reminder of life above ground.

Although retained by the London Passenger Transport Board, Beck remained a 'temp' draughtsman until 1937. This meant he was in the unfortunate position of being both freelancer and employee. His designer status was ambiguous and he was constantly defending his creation against badly conceived alterations. The copyright was the Board's, but Beck believed he held the right to oversee changes.

Beck left London Transport in 1947 to teach at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts. He was happy there, yet devastated by his exclusion from the redesign of his Diagram to incorporate the Victoria Line. It was a bitter blow.

Today Harry Beck's design is recognised as a work of graphic genius.

The following features show how Harry Beck's Underground Map has become part of London's culture:

• adopted  by most global transport systems;
• constantly  upgraded without losing its essential simplicity;
• 20th  century graphic design phenomenon and artistic icon;
• produced  in varying formats over 60 million times globally;
• London  Transport Museum has a Beck gallery;
• Finchley Underground, Beck's home station, has a commemorative plaque.

Beck's optimistic vision forms the basis of today's Journey Planner, a functional name for a deceptively simple idea by a designer of persistence and integrity.

Source:

• Mr Beck's Underground Map: A History by Ken      Garland (Capital Transport, 1998)