The Beck effect: How London’s look went global

Almost every city in the world show their transit systems as a diagram, and most of those can trace their original inspiration to London’s fabled Underground map. 

Conceived in the early 1930s by Henry (aka Harry) Beck, his concept of representing curvaceous track routes and labyrinthine tunnels with straightened coloured lines, evening out spaces between stations and condensing suburbs while expanding the centre…have become the standard for schematic styles.

This online presentation by Mark Ovenden first considers in-car strip-maps, ‘Dowagrams’, and Berlin S-Bahn maps that existed prior to Beck’s work and which some argue may have inspired him. 

Beck’s first diagram was published by London Transport early in 1933, its pared-down, clean and ‘modern’ feel seemed to echo the architecture of new stations opening across the system. The talk will focus on how Beck’s style of mass transit network map then spread around the globe. From pure plagiarism (by Sydney in 1937), to stylistic sampling (in 1950s New York; Tokyo from the 1960s; 1970s Moscow; Madrid and Barcelona in the 80s; Paris in the 90s), to the DNA of Beck’s design ideas and iconography being the dominant style adopted worldwide. 

With so many new metro and light rail systems opened in the last 30 years, especially in Asia, it’s rare to find a system that has not been presented by a schematic that can effectively trace its inspiration back to Beck. But with passengers’ reliance on smartphones, and the demand for live maps displaying real-time information, can the Beck effect survive the digital world?

About our speaker

Mark Ovenden traces his interest in cartography back to childhood when he began collecting transit maps from around the world, having been inspired by London’s Tube diagram. Despite following a media career spanning print, music, radio and TV, his interest in mapping was revealed by his first book Metro Maps of The World in 2003. It was picked up in the US by Penguin, being rebranded Transit Maps of the World (2007) and received critical press acclaim. Since then he’s published a dozen books on design and cartography in public transport, now translated into many languages, some becoming best-sellers (“in their own category of weird books about maps by niche writers”, he claims). He’s also presented documentary programmes for BBC4 and Radio 4, regularly lectures for the Arts Society and recently gained a Masters qualification for his study of British Rail design and identity. His latest offering Iconic Transit Maps highlights the design process of 50 of the world’s most respected schematics, most of which stand on the shoulders of Mr Becks 1930s work.