File talk:Manchester Metrolink Owl.svg

Looking for critique

The map in question

I'm not sure if this is the right page to be asking about this, so please feel free to move my discussion if it's not.

I've just been playing around in Inkscape for the first time, and in a few hours I've knocked together a map of Metrolink, Manchester's main public transport network.

It's basically a copy of the official map [1], but I have played around a bit with the angles and added some tourist comments to it, as well as using images from this expedition and a wheelchair symbol I found in SVG format at the public-domain Open Clip Art Library [2]. I added Mark's logo to the top left hand corner since it's as good as official now.

My SVG source has also been uploaded if you want to play around with it.

I'd like to know what people think about this map. It's my first go at doing anything in an SVG editor, but I'm happy to accept any criticism people want to throw at me.

-- (WT-en) Owl 14:19, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Rich! That's awesome. I'm really impressed with your eye.

Since you've asked for critique though I'll say that the presumed Wikivoyage emblem doesn't really mix with the manchester metro railways logo. I would separate the two of them, with the manchester logo in the upper left and the compass star in the lower right. -- (WT-en) Mark 16:19, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I wasn't really going for a logo at all. It was just the words "Manchester Metrolink" in Coolvetica. I stuck the Wikivoyage emblem on it so it would clearly be tied to this site. Don't you think the words would be a bit bare without some kind of emblem? I'd like to see your ideas, if you want to play with my SVG a little, or I could have a go myself. -- (WT-en) Owl 16:29, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Well, the way logos work psychologically is that the emblem and the logo (text) get really closely bound. Assuming that the cmopass star thing is really going to be part of the logotype then we have to either display it by itself or with the text "Wikivoyage" set in coolvetica. The title of a map like "Manchster Metro" really has to stay by itself. I still think that this metro map is a really great design though. With your permission I'd like to make some changes. -- (WT-en) Mark 16:35, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Permission? It's cc-by-sa, isn't it? :D I'd be very happy for you to make a few changes. I'm planning to make a few tweaks myself (particularly the spacing of the red text and that Mosley Street should read "soutbound trams only") but I will wait for your revised edition before I make them. :) -- (WT-en) Owl 03:04, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

OK. The first thing I'm going to do is to remove the emblem part of our new logo (I guess that's official now?) and then re-instate the whole logo down below. Using our emblem with the name Manchester Metrolink makes it looks like it's part of their logo, which is not a good thing to do. I've also changed the headline font to Ray Larrabie's Blue Highway which is very well-suited for maps. I would strongly suggest that we use his Coolvetica font for the logo only (in the various languages of course). This is important part of branding. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:05, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I wound up adding a white background too. I reckon a metro schematic probably ought to have a white background rather than being transparent (like the logo has to be). Also since metro "maps" are actually schematics rather than being actual maps it makes more sense I think to use the whole logo rather than just a compass star. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:20, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I like your changes, Mark. I was thinking about the white background too. Do you think I should switch to Blue Highway for all of the station names too, rather than Dustismo? I'm not fantastically keen on the positioning of the Wikivoyage logo - I think it deserves to be in one of the corners, since it looks a bit like it's floating in the middle of nowhere there. I'll have a play tonight when I'm home from work. -- (WT-en) Owl 10:49, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Yes, you're right, the logo should go to one of the corners. I guess the canvas size will have to be enlarged to do that, but that shouldn't be too hard. And I think it might be a good idea to go with Blue Highway for the station names too, although on the Paris maps I use Blue Highway for everything except métro station names. Actually I've got a style guide for the paris maps which I started with a long rambling thing on the talk page for Image:Paris.svg -- (WT-en) Mark 11:58, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I like it. I think we should try to come up with some guidelines for scematic maps like that. Colors of trainlines should of course match the official scheme. But other colors, fonts, logos, icons, how stations is marked could be standardized. E.g. compare with Image:Map trains cph.png, which is mostly an automatic conversion from PDF. I might add your bus and train icons. --(WT-en) elgaard 11:53, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I agree that there should be a guideline, and that the bus and train Icons here ought to go into it. -- (WT-en) Mark 11:58, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

OK, I've made a few tweaks and re-uploaded both the SVG and the PNG.

• I followed some advice I found on one of Mark's pages that suggested reducing the colour depth to 64. This seems to have reduced the file size to about 33% without affected the full-scale image at all. The version scaled by Mediawiki seems to look more blocky than usual, though.
  • Actually, now I see why this is. Mediawiki is not scaling it now, it's letting the browser do that. It must be that the file size is now sufficiently small that Mediawiki just links to the full-size image with some CSS to render it smaller. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't dither images when it scales them. -- (WT-en) Owl 03:41, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)
• I changed the "Manchester Metrolink" title to be in the colours of the tram lines, since I thought it looked a bit dull in black. I moved the "Wikivoyage" logo to just beneath it so it didn't look lost.
• I changed the font for the station names to "Blue Highway" and it does look pretty good. I also shifted some of the names around.
• I told the SVG it should have a white background too. I think Mark may have added this by hand because the SVG still had a transparent background.
• I reuploaded with the normal "Upload file" mechanism. However, this seems to have blatted the previous revision of each, and the thumbnail images have not been regenerated. Does anyone know a better way to upload a new version of a file so we keep revision control and the thumbnails are updated?

-- (WT-en) Owl 03:39, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Everything else in the map looks great, but the drop-shaded Manchester Metrolink title is horribi-ba-ble. Please change it back -- why not use the same font as for the stations? And I also think the Wikivoyage logo needs to be put in a corner somewhere....

And thumbnail regeneration is just a browser cache issue, try shift-reload (for the image) to make the new one appear. (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:49, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I've made a few more changes to the SVG:

• Darkened the title and got rid of the drop shadow. Sorry. I know you wanted to liven it up a bit, but it's probably best to avoid drop shadows; they're really cliché at this point.
• Expanded the canvass size and added guides to line things up.
• Moved the logo to the lower left corner.

-- (WT-en) Mark 04:54, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Hi again. One more little note: Yes it's good to reduce the number of colors in the PNG version, but when you do it's usually better to make sure that dithering is turned off. Gimp defaults to doing "Floyd-Steinberg" dithering, which resulted in the logo looking like it had a case of the measles. ;) The new version was made with dithering off. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:07, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Thanks, Mark. It looks fantastic now. I agree on reflection (I did it very early in the morning) that the drop-shadow effect was tacky, but I still think it needs something. The name looks very alone in that corner. I think your extension to the bottom to fit the logo works quite well. I was scared initially of making such a change but I should've tried it. Just one question: how do you upload your new versions of the files - whenever I try using the Special:Upload page I get the problems described above. -- (WT-en) Owl 10:25, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

No prob. Actually the upload page works fine, it's just that the image page doesn't get re-cached after the upload (for some reason), so you have to do it manually. Make some minor edit to the page, even if it's just white space, and everything should be fine. -- (WT-en) Mark 10:30, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Ahhhh, that would explain why I got a slightly outdated version of your SVG, without the white background, and why I couldn't see your changes or mine after the upload. Silly Mediawiki. :) -- (WT-en) Owl 13:09, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)