James King
Foundation
Route Generation
Defining the routes around Dorset
Routes and Stations
It was time to start work on my Bournemouth & Poole monorail idea, so I used Illustrator and Google Maps to come up with good and effective routes for the Dorset area. Originally, this monorail system would only go around the BCP Council area, but then it ended up extending as far as Southampton, Dorchester & Salisbury. I enjoyed coming up with the routes however, it was quite a challenge to make them effective and work. I had to try and cover enough area that would be accessible to a lot of people. They also had to have enough connections to other stations, so people could easily change to go where they want.
Map Overlay
After coming up with some of the main routes above, I drew out where they would be on an overlay of Dorset. This really helped, as I could see which areas I've covered well, and others not so much. This caused me to add more routes, to make the transport network work effectively. It also gave me a rough design of what the map could look like before I neaten it up.
Route Maps
Shows the stops of each line
Line Map Design Ideas
Line maps are something I wanted to design for my Monorail system ever since visiting the London Underground, as on each line they display specific maps for that line in the appropriate colour. So these maps essentially display the stops on the route your traveling on. These would be displayed inside the trains of each line, and on the website, for people to view. I experimented with having filled in designs, different style of station markers and also came up with a key at the bottom. Finally, I chose to use and develop design number 2, as I think it has the right amount of colour on it.
Final Line Maps
Here are the final designs for the maps of each line. They are all colour coded and list the stations they stop at. The only exceptions are the Outer (Brown) and Inner (Red) lines as they just display the main stations, as they are by far the longest lines in terms of stops. I am very happy with how these turned out because I think they all look great.
SouthLink
My Transport Brand
SouthLink
I always wanted to change the name from Bournemouth & Poole Monorail System to something shorter and memorable. So after lots of thinking, I came up with the Brand name, SouthLink - Travel links on the South Coast. I came up with multiple logos, as well as a backstory for the company:
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SouthLink Inc. was established in 2020, where the company built a new Monorail System in the Bournemouth & Poole area, in partnership with the BCP Council.
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In 2022, after the huge success of the Monorail, the company purchased other local transport companies including More Bus, Yellow Buses & South Western Railway, to
expand the company dramatically. These transport companies continued to operate
under the same name, but with the addition of the SouthLink name.
SouthLink continues to operate transport companies around the South Coast to very efficient and high standards.
Logo Ideas
Here are my logo ideas and development for SouthLink and the Monorail. For the monorail logo, I wanted to have a monorail in the logo, so I experimented with curving the corners and different layouts. Eventually, I went with a few different ones that I could incorporate into my map. I also added the southlink name onto the three existing transport companies, to fit with the backstory of the company.
Interactive Route Map
Use this interactive map to see all routes and stops. You can hide routes to see a select few and zoom in to see all stops. I made this with a website called MapHub, to help me with designing the main map on Illustrator, as I needed to see roughly where everything would go, and check that I get every stop right.