About

In general

I am a graphic designer hailing from France (still, with a foot in Lisbon, the capital of the Portuguese Republic, as the second half of my name brings to the ears this Iberian land), specialised in maps and information design matters. Here you will find some of my projects, commissioned or done for the sake of pleasure in the last few years. I don’t display any resume here, nonetheless I can state that my formal training ended with a MA in Visual Communication Summa cum Laude, in 2004 (for more specifics, you can read this https://transit-map.com/quick-bio/, ici en français https://transit-map.com/une-rapide-bio/ or you are welcome to contact me). So, I come initially from graphic design, not cartography strictly speaking, but as I was more and more interested in the visual representation of information, in regard to public transit networks, already during my studies, I leaned to the spatial side and the two eventually merged in my practice.

The core of my work and my main interest are Transit Maps*, or in a more detailed fashion: I aim at depicting a public transit network in the clearest way in order to help every user to sort easily the mass of detail a transit network presents, that is an endeavour straddling several areas, cartography and design to name two. I do both schematic (in a wide range or degrees of stylization, I don’t follow any doctrine or system) and geographic maps. There is no martingale, no universal solution or winning formula which could be used here and there, just requiring adjustment to the “terrain” specifics, it does not work like that. It has much more to do with urban idiosyncrasy and visual semiology or semiotics. (More on this subject below this presentation, and in a more comprehensive way, in a case study, in French, on this page of my site)

I have designed the official network maps of cities such as Lyon (Metro, Trams, Trackless trolleys, MTC Diagram or “plan Lignes fortes” TCL, since 2011), Dijon (DIVIA network, since 2012), Metz (LE MET’ network, since 2014), or in Toulouse, the “plan général” (official name of the 2016 “géo-“ schematic map, TISSEO network, displayed at bus stops) which is an updated version of my original work done in the Fall of 2013, along with several other commissioned projects that ended up not being implemented for all sorts of reasons alien to design. I also present my own approach to maps of American cities’ networks such as Detroit or Kansas City, where the official versions seem to me to be rather unsatisfactory.

On the other hand, I also draw detailed City Maps (quite a different approach than for networks mapping) of places that fascinate me. I present here the maps of Brasília, Milan, and Lisbon. My intent was that every single street, building, landmark and points of interest should be depicted — but through the process of designing which entails selection, construction, rendering — revealing the urban “texture”. In the specific case of Brasília, it results almost in a “footprint”, a figure ground depiction of “Plano Piloto”, the original (planned) part of the city named Brasília, thought out by Lúcio Costa, this area of the city being a design project in itself (in an outstanding scale).

But enough of the real world! On a more artistic vein, I have came up with what I have called Villes Bis dystopian versions of existing cities. Here you can find the pictures of Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Barcelona. There is more to read on this topic here, if you can bear the French.

Another project of mine, that took several years to complete, is a wholly imaginary city. You read well. Based on the Cité industrielle of Tony Garnier, I challenged myself to imagine that city nowadays, had it ever been, and all the transformations that might have occurred over the decades. This map, however, shall remain a well-kept secret, only to be seen one day at an exhibition near by. I accept invitations!

* more here: https://transit-map.com/more-about-transit-maps/

NOTA: to view the pictures full size, click right and open a new tab or window.

On diagrams

Schematic maps and diagrams: I am inclined to see the latter as the more severely stylized version of the former (in the field of transit map graphics), so there is a continuum between the two. The term diagram being polysemous, when I use it, specially in English, it is not exactly as understood by Jacques Bertin in his seminal “Sémiologie graphique”. As French is my mother tongue, I wanted to precise this notion which is broader in my view.

Diagrams structure information in order to foster communication, comprehension, inference and discovery. To do so, they map ideas, and relations among ideas, to marks and place in space on a virtual page. In this way they convey knowledge more directly and effectively than symbolic words, they convey essential relationships accurately (Tversky 2017).

For many purposes, diagrams are designed for clarity, as transit maps are designed to navigate the transit system depicted.

Essential information should be readily and accurately perceived and understood. This entails selecting the necessary information, eliminating the information that clutters and distracts, and presenting that information in the right way. Stripping away the inessential, removing what is considered to be irrelevant contextual material that may obscure the essentials. That is a very important point in regard to the making of transit maps.

About this matter: Tversky, Barbara, 2017. ‘Diagrams’ in Information Design: research and practice, ed. by Black, Luna, Lund, and Walker, p.349-359. London and New York: Routledge.