Cameron Booth

My original Eisenhower Interstate System in the Style of H.C. Beck’s London Underground Diagram is one of my most successful pieces of design, with almost 85,000 views on Flickr, countless posters sold, and inclusion in the excellent book Mapping America: Exploring the Continent (highly recommended for map geeks!).

However, since I completed it, I have produced quite few more transit-styled diagrams and have learned a lot about the design skills required to produce them. As a result, some elements of the original poster began to grate on my nerves – poor design choices and sloppy technique had produced something that was no longer up to my own personal standards.

So I started again from scratch. Although the two diagrams may look superficially similar, almost every aspect was reevaluated and reworked. Route line colours, line thicknesses and corner radii were tweaked to more closely match the diagram’s inspiration: the London Tube map, and a logo that playfully echoes (without being derivative of!) the famous London Underground roundel was created.

Accuracy is greatly improved on this version, with every endpoint being rechecked: I-55′s southern end is now properly in LaPlace, Louisiana, rather than my previously lazy choice of New Orleans. Similarly, I-93 now threads its way through Boston to rejoin I-95 in Canton, and I-64 extends past St Louis to terminate in Wentzville. I was also able to show the unusual east/west splits in I-35 in Fort Worth/Dallas and Minneapolis/St Paul, and have added more intermediate cities to many of the route lines. Finally, I addressed perhaps the biggest complaint I received on the first version: the omission of Pittsburgh. It now sits nestled between its surrounding interstates (I-70, I-76 and I-79, which form a neat triangle around the city, just as in real life).

As always, comments are welcome. Posters available for purchase once more due to popular demand – click here!