the new york city subway system elaine lo
i. history
a city in decline In the mid-nineteen-sixties, the New York subway system was heading into the worst stretch in its history, and maybe the worst stretch that any big transit system will ever have. For more than a century, it had been a manufacturing town, its big airy loft buildings cranking out machine parts, Oreos, paper boxes, printed matter, refined sugar, you name it. Millions of immigrants had arrived expressly to work in its factories.
By the sixties, the South and the West, offering clean new space and cheap labor, had begun to draw people away. Between 1969 and 1976, 600,000 jobs left New York. After a century in which the city’s population had increased nearly tenfold, it was losing people for the first time. New York was going broke.
sw iss sty le
The up-and-coming style of the sixties, emerging out of Basel and Zurich, was loosely referred to as “Swiss.” It was characterized by clean solid bright colors, typographic grids, simple and spare illustrations — often without shading, with monochrome color fields making up the graphics — and, especially, the sans-serif typeface called Helvetica.
iii. history cont’d
vignelli: information architect
The subway rider should be only given information at the point of decision. Never before. Never after.
v. history cont’d
vii. changes in visual identity
1964
1924
1949
1958
1939
2010 1985
1972
1995
2012
ix. visual identity
its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the 20th century
developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger influenced by the famous 19th century typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk
helvetica renamed after the Latin adjective for Switzerland, Helvetia notable features of Helvetica include the termination of all strokes on horizontal or vertical lines and unusually tight letter spacing, which give it a dense, compact appearance
the avatar of modern efficiency
xi. visual identity cont’d
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viii. today
In 2015, the subway delivered over 1.76 billion rides, averaging approximately 5.7 million daily rides on weekdays and a combined 5.9 million rides each weekend
The subway has always provided a space for me to think. I don’t fiddle with my phone, I don’t read, and I don’t listen to music. Instead, I observe the myriad people around me, all going to different places to meet different people, commuting to the office or back home, perched on the edge of the seat or slumped against the back of it. I read the advertisements above me: Glossier is urging me to use a code to get $10 off at checkout. Underneath a haze of fluorescence, I think about the day ahead of me, the responsibilities I must face, and most importantly, the stop I am getting off at. I appreciate the stark clarity with which the signs demarcating the stop we are at are designed--heavy, white letters against a matte black background, with a thin white line across the top. Sterility and plainness give way to a sense of comfort and reliability. I’ve reached my destination: Prospect Av. Av, not Ave or Avenue. I step off the train and follow the exit sign, following the flood of riders that are going in the same direction as me. We walk up the steps to a different world, one with typefaces other than Helvetica, one where a Prospect Avenue exists, one that is more disorienting and unpredictable. I feel more and less free.
XV. TYPE SPECIMEN
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Bibliography Bonanos, Christopher. "The NASA & NYCTA Graphics Standards Manual Reissues." Standards Manual. N.p., Sept. 2014. Web. 03 May 2016. Person, and Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan. “15 Subway Maps That Trace NYC’s Transit History.” Gizmodo. N.p., 03 Sept. 2013. Web. 03 May 2016.