For this project, I was given an existing timetable for Amtrak trains. It was tiny, confusing, and entirely not well designed at all. The assigment was to completely redesign the timetable onto one spread, complete with a key, in a way that was pleasing to use and designed well.

As with most projects, the first part of this was research. I looked up the map of the way the trains moved, because it helped to understand the timetable in front of me, which was too complicated to even understand in that regard. I also profusely studied the exisiting timetable, marking everything that needed to be fixed on it, and otherwise getting a general feel for what needed to be redone.

After coming up with a plan, I started sketching out ideas for a new layout for the timetable. My biggest concern was the vermonter train and the connector train. In the original timetable, these trains were mixed in with all the other trains, even though they were completely different types of trains. The connector and vermonter trains ended up at a completely different destination than the acelas and northeast regionals. The vermonter, in fact, didn't even stop at most of the stops of the others. I decided I needed to somehow pull them away from the rest of the trains enough so that it was clear they were different. I ultimately did this by pulling the stops and destinations of the vermonter and connector trains to the bottom of the timetable, so it was clear there was something different about them, and the rest of the trains had the final destination in a different spot of the timetable, as seen above.

I chose a spot color of cyan because although it stands out as a spot color, it isn't too vibrant as to not be readable. I used it to differentiate among the different train types with a border, and to help create a rythm in the rows of the table.

For the key, I changed some symbols from the original so it was easier to tell what each thing was, and compressed and simplified the information so that it fit on the spread nicely. I used Verdana for the typeface because the typeface is easy to read at small point sizes, and the numbers in the typeface are simple.