Harry
Beck (1902-1974) has been honoured with a Blue Plaque, who is Harry Beck you
ask? Harry Beck's claim to fame is he drew what we now know as the London Underground
map. Becks design, described as a "brave step in pure geometry",
remains the template for today's map. Harry was said to have been paid 5 guineas
for the original design. The map, called a diagrammatic map is based on
vertical, horizontal and 45-degree diagonals was so revolutionary and successful
that it went on to become the bases for other underground maps around the world
like Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam and Singapore. Maps that are used by hundreds of
millions of travellers and tourists every year to find their way around these
huge cities.
Now
I expect you are wondering why I have written this? Several years back when I
was a councillor and in an attempt to generate tourism into the town the
council bought the notice board in the middle of the town and replace the
outdated map and adverts with new. It was essentially for the
benefit of tourists with the adverts around the edge mainly showing places to
eat and drink in the town. Initially there was some success with a few restaurants
advertising with their premises marked on the map but eventually they lost interest and it fizzled out, as it was aimed purely at tourists I designed the map based on Harry Beck's familiar original design, again something that many tourists the world over understand, after all that is for whom the map is for, or is it?, a couple of parish
meetings ago one gentleman, who has lived here many years stood up and
complained he couldn't understand the map, with this one of the longest serving
councillors agreed, saying she found it difficult. Needless to say the rest is
history and now the map has gone, to be replaced by a usual boring map that actually shows very little of the town centre but takes you out of the middle of the town for what the map was intended.Now comes the scary bit! Why does a long term resident and a long term councillor need to look at a street map of Chipping Norton? Surely they don't need a map to find their way around town?
Now you know why Chippy is stuck in the past.