Steer Davies Gleave New media design

Steer Davies Gleave developed
Rome’s first integrated public
transport information system
for ATAC, the local transport
operator, in 1997. The original
project delivered a suite
of passenger information
products, a new house style
and support for the set up of
an internal design department.
The demands for increasingly
sophisticated mapping
on ATAC’s design team,
necessitated a review of
their processes resulting in
Steer Davies Gleave being
commissioned to develop
a system to semi automate
production and standardise
the range of printed outputs.
The new system constitutes
a dramatic departure from
the legacy processes without
compromising on the visual
design or legibility. It links
directly into the client’s
geographic dataset to
dynamically update the base
mapping. Data related to bus,
rail, tram and Metro services
is sourced directly from the
Operations department
and is overlaid on the base
mapping. This process almost
entirely removes the need for
manual intervention and has
completely changed the way
the department can operate.
Historically, production
times were significant. The
complexity of the transport
network and the frequency
of service changes meant
that maintaining the old
products was an endless task.
Producing an updated city
bus map now takes minutes
instead of hours or even days.
Staff have been released from
repetitive manual activities
that dominated their time and
can dedicate more energy to
quality control and creating
targeted information to
better meet the needs of all
passengers.
The system is highly flexible,
providing simple functions
to support the production of
bespoke and one-off outputs.