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Oct 05, 2015

121st Anniversary of the first published timetable in Japan

Today's doodle marks the 121st anniversary of the publication of the first Japanese railway timetable, the advent of time consciousness, and the beginning of efficient and reliable mass transit in Japan.

To celebrate this achievement, we decided to create our own, unique schedule with invented names, destinations and times in homage to the humble train timetable. We wanted to reference as many traditional design elements, symbols and typographic styles as possible. To help out, we gathered as many "timetable geeks" as we could find in our Tokyo office. Our team of experts had many brainstorming sessions and came up with more ideas than we could possibly include in the final artwork. Hopefully fans of train timetables will enjoy all the small details we poured into our schedule. 

Happy exploring and safe travels!

 

Above, our team of timetable geeks, hard at work.

A very early, "napkin sketch" of the idea for our timetable doodle. 

A slightly more refined draft for how we thought we might be able to spell "Google" in the timetable.

Where this Doodle appeared

The Doodle 121st Anniversary of the first published timetable in Japan launched Oct 05, 2015

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