This is Harry Beck
And this is the map of the London Underground he designed in 1931
with the central stations spread out
and the distant suburban stations squished together
making it easier to read and prettier to look at
than any map of the network that had come before.
If you want to hear that sentence again
but with enough extra detail that it takes about 9 minutes
go back and watch part 1.
But if you've already seen part 1
or you're a busy executive, or you correctly assume
that you don't need to see part 1 to understand part 2
then here comes part 2
in which we discuss the impact Harry Beck's map has had over the decades
and whether or not in recent years the map has become a bit rubbish.
The Tube Map, as it came to be known, came to define London
and changed the way Londoners see their own city.
Even if you weren't traveling by underground
the Tube Map was a useful way to familiarise and orient yourself.
What part of London are you in?
Chalk Farm
On the Northern line?
Yeah, you?
Wood Green
Piccadilly line?
That’s right.
So, where should we do drinks? Kings Cross or Leicester Square?
Hey! Are you up for that drink?
Hey! How's it going in Chalk Farm?
Hey!
You know what? Duck you! You're not even fit.
Perhaps more impressively, Beck’s map didn't just change the way people see London,
it actually literally changed London.
Have you, just like this century, reached your mid-thirties?
Then it’s time to settle for suburbia.
This patch of Middlesex countryside is fast becoming part of the London suburbs
thanks to the hard work of these handsome builders.
Oh yes.
These estates are conveniently served by new stations
in Southgate, Oakwood and [BEEP]fosters.
There they are on the Tube Map.
See?
They can’t be that far from central London, now can they?
Yes, £535 is rather a lot to pay for a semi-detached house
but it’s worth it for the portable fireplace
and fold-out whiskey warmer.
So, become a suburbanite
and you can tell your friends and yourself that you still live in London.
If it’s on the Tube map, it counts as London, God save the King!
Harry Beck’s Tube Map had been such a rousing success in London
that he thought he’d have a go at some other cities.
Here's his version of Sydney’s rail network, to which their response was…
Oh, that's a bloody ripper.
Thanks fella!
Although curiously Harry received no credit for this work
despite the garishly obvious similarities between the two designs.
And then he had a go at the Paris Metro, to which their response was…
Absolument pas!
C’est pas possible!
L’idée même qu’un sale Anglais dessine le plan de notre cher Métro Parisien
mais ça va pa la tête, non?
But Harry needn’t have worried.
London was keeping him more than busy enough.
Over the decades, Harry designed dozens and dozens of different Tube Maps
making constant adjustments, experimenting with the spacing,
angles, line thickness, and connections
in an obsessive effort to get his map juuuust right.
The Northern line in particular drove him nuts.
He drew piles of rough sketches trying lots of different ways
to show the complicated service patterns
around Euston, Camden Town and Mornington Crescent.
While Harry Beck was very good at designing Tube Maps,
he was pretty rubbish at business.
Harry was never rehired by London Transport.
He was technically just a freelancer.
For his first design, he was paid the paltry sum of five guineas
which in today's money is…
about £5.25.
And he wasn’t paid much more for the any of his other designs.
Worse still, despite the Tube Map's extremely wide distribution,
Harry was never paid any royalties.
No contract of any kind had ever been signed.
There was an unofficial unwritten understanding that
any time London transport needed an update to their map
Harry Beck would do it for them.
And this arrangement worked fine for both sides until 1960.
For the first time in 54 years
the construction of an entirely brand new Underground line was announced.
The Victoria line was on its way
and to make room for it the Tube Map would need a complete rejigging.
This was a dream come true project for Harry Beck.
But unfortunately, there was a new man in charge.
To help launch the Victoria Line,
London Transport brought in a new Head of Publicity
The relatively young and relatively inexperienced Harold Hutchinson.
Hutchinson didn't like the unofficial arrangement London Transport had with Harry Beck.
Actually to put it more accurately, he didn't like Harry.
I consider Harry Beck to be a difficult man
who's rather fretful and not easy to deal with.
So in order to get control of our map back from him,
I'm going to redesign the Tube Map with the Victoria line update all by myself.
How hard can it be?
In 1960, the updated map - with a cover proudly boasting...
“London's famous map has been given a…
“NEW LOOK!!!!”
and “Easier to read!”
was printed and sent to every station on the network.
There is just so much to hate about this map.
Why is it so jagged and pointy?
Look at the mess in this bit!
He’s had to split Aldgate into Ald… Gate. Eurgh.
Trafalgar Skwuh?
Liverpool Stuh?
Why are some but not all stations in block capitals?
Look at the Victoria line, it's such an obviously crammed in afterthought.
That’s not how you do a Tube Map.
When Beck saw the map, he was horrified.
Not only because it was such a terrible job but because it had been done behind his back.
Hoping to put things right, Harry sent a polite letter
to London Transport’s former head of publicity, Christian Barman.
Fascinatingly, all the letters back and forth between Beck and Barman
have survived in the archives.
but they're very long.
So, to summarise…
Dear Mr Barman.
Sorry to cause a fuss
but I thought we had an agreement that I designed your Tube Maps.
Dear Mr Beck.
No we didn’t.
Dear Mr Barman, But I spent ages working on a new design for the Victoria line.
Do you want it?
THAT’S how you add a new line to a Tube Map!
Look at how simple and friendly it is.
That's how good Harry Beck was, he makes it look so easy.
And you know what?
It takes looking at this one
side by side with the really rubbish one
to see how easy it wasn’t.
But this design, arguably Harry Beck’s finest work, was never used.
London Transport had made their mind up.
Dear Mr Beck, we've taken your criticism on board
and replaced Mr Hutchinson's design with a map that's much more like yours.
Dear Mr Barman, That’s nice, can I have my money now please?
Dear Mr Beck, No.
But it's my map.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Yes it…
This went on for five years.
Beck claimed the 45 degree angles were his idea.
London Transport claimed you can't copyright the idea of 45 degree angles,
45 degree angles have been around since the 1590s.
In the end, Harry never did get round to suing London Transport.
In 1965, both he and his wife had had enough stress and gave up fighting.
London Transport removed Harry Beck’s credit from all their maps
and any trace of his involvement disappeared.
Well I hope you enjoyed the decades of hard work I gave you.
You are the ungrateful corporation to my lifetime of loyal service.
Sadly, Harry Beck would never design a Tube map for London Transport again.
Sadlier, Harry Beck continued designing Tube Maps
that he knew London Transport would never use
for the amusement of only himself.
Rejected by London Transport, Harry moved out of London
to spend his old age in Hampshire.
And in 1974, at the age of 72 and seven twenty-fifths
Harry Beck died in relative obscurity.
For decades after his death, the name Harry Beck was largely forgotten.
The hero who designed the Tube Map and had an immeasurably huge impact on London
was known only to massive Tube nerds.
But that started to change in 2001.
On the 70th anniversary of Beck’s original diagram
TfL’s resident designer Alan Foale, a massive Tube nerd and Harry Beck super-fan
decided to restore Harry’s credit to the Tube Map.
And since then, every poster features Harry Beck’s name
in the bottom right corner where it belongs.
Dozens of plaques have appeared in the houses and stations
where Harry Beck used to live and get the train.
And in 2006, the British public voted Harry Beck's Tube Map
as their second favourite British design of the 20th century.
The winner was Concord by the way.
But where's Concord now?
Dead, that's where.
Beck’s map has gone on to be so influential, it's hard to imagine
quite how mad and brave and clever it must have looked in 1933.
The impact of his design has reached far beyond London.
Pretty much every city in the world with any kind of transport network
has a map with a colourful, schematic, non-geographic diagram
that wouldn't exist without Harry Beck
with the notable exception of the New York Subway
which insists on being as baffling and ugly as possible.
So London can take pride in having got there first
and shown the rest of the world how it's done.
But in the last 90 years, London's Tube Map has become a lot busier.
As well as new lines and stations appearing,
our Tube Map has been gradually filling up with stuff that’s not the Tube.
The Docklands Light Railway, the Tramlink, the Elizabeth line, Thameslink
and in my opinion, most distractingly, the Overground
a series of mostly unconnected suburban lines
every single one of which is shown in the same shade of stripy orange
hashtag split the Overground into different colours and names
to make it easier to read on the map
and less confusing for tourists and commuters alike
especially when it comes to temporary closures and delays.
and that’s not mentioning the river services, cable car, walking routes,
IKEA stores, accessibility information, or fare zones.
With all these additions the modern Tube map has become an untidy clutter.
Good design standards seem to have dropped lately
with many of the decisions appearing almost provocatively incompetent
and would send Harry Beck rotating 45 degrees in his grave.
Is the problem simply that the job is undoable?
With more than twice as many stations since Beck’s original design 90 years ago
has the network become too crowded to stick to Beck's principles of simplicity?
Has London's transport network grown too large for a map of it to be both useful and beautiful?
No!
The internet has no shortage of stunning, elegant, easy to read alternative solutions
supplied on a near constant basis by eager Tube Map-thusiasts just like Harry Beck.
Quite why TfL doesn't have the decency to even steal from them
let alone employ one of them as their designers, especially this one
is beyond me.
Slightly controversial, but perhaps the Tube Map
would do its job better if some information were removed from it.
Do we need the trams?
Do we need the river?
(Boo)
Do we need the fare zones?
(Boo!)
Do we need the accessibility information…
(Booo!!)
…to be quite so blobby?
Perhaps the question we should be asking is do we still need the Tube Map at all?
These days you're more likely to plan your journey with an app than a map
so why does it matter if the map is a clutter?
It matters because the Tube Map is so much more than just a useful journey planner.
It represents London, in every interpretation of that word.
For visitors, it's the first thing you look at
when you want to familiarise yourself with the city.
For Londoners, it's the way the city looks in our brains.
It creates order out of chaos, simplicity out of complexity.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say
the Tube Map is the closest thing London has to a flag.
Staring at the Tube Map should make you want to jump on a train and go exploring.
And if it's well designed, cared about and done properly
that's exactly what it will continue to do for generations.
This definitely could have been a Map Men episode.
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Surfshark VPN is an app and browser extension that virtually places your device in another spot
in more than a hundred countries across planet earth.
And if we were big enough, we’d use it straight away
to access streaming services and discounts that
aren’t usually available on our planet.
For example, if you’ve got a soft spot for The Walking Dead
but you’re in Britain, and it’s not available on your Netflix
you can switch to a different spot in the USA, and watch it on American Netflix.
And, we’ve managed to spot another advantage of using Surfshark.
If you turn Surfshark on, your internet gets safer
Because Surfshark masks your IP address
and protects you and your data against advertisers and intergalactic space hackers.
And Surfshark lets you use one account on an unlimited number of devices.
But we’re in a spot of bother.
The nearest button for us to click on the link in the description below
to download Surfshark is the equivalent of many millions of miles away
and beyond the reach of our civilisation.
Which is a nuisance, because Surfshark are currently offering
a whopping 85% percent off, plus an extra three months for free.
And there’s a 30 day money-back guarantee which effectively makes it a free trial.
But unless my planet manages to get it together to build a spaceship big enough
to fly the equivalent of millions of miles away and powerful enough
to click the link in the description below between
now and the 31st of December
when this Black Friday offer ends,
it looks like we’ll have to miss out on all that wonderful enhanced security
and international internet access.
So, my advice to you is
if you’re from a civilisation for which clicking the link in the description below
is a trivial matter of raising your finger up a bit
and then down a bit by a couple of centimetres,
then seize the opportunity, and g…
AAAAARGH!!!!
Eurgh.