From the course: Universal Principles of Design
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Orientation Sensitivity
- [Jill] Hi, I'm Jill Butler, and this is the Universal Principles of Design, in this movie, Orientation Sensitivity or appealing to the better angles of our nature. In 1931, a young unemployed engineering draftsman by the name of Harry Beck decided to tackle the problem of redesigning the London Underground's rail map. The rail system had grown large and complex over the years and its renderings had become increasingly difficult to comprehend in map form. Beck realized that since the railway ran mostly underground the physical locations of the stations and other geographic details were irrelevant to the travelers. They couldn't see them. So perhaps drawing on his experience designing electrical circuits, he traded realism for readability, replacing irregular lines with horizontal, vertical, and 45 degree diagonal lines only. The then tweaked the map's scale, placing the stations at equal distances from one another creating a nice balanced composition. And last but not least, he…
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