It was “the first map published by the Authority designed by an established design firm,” the Transit Museum said. The Vignelli Map was introduced in August 1972 by the TA and Unimark International, whose principals included Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli (other designers, like Joan Charysyn, were also involved). The stops were represented by squares or rectangles containing the numbers or letters for all the lines using that stop. Where a particular stretch of subway track was shared by several lines, you would see several colors next to each other. The next map, introduced in 1967 by a collaboration of designers, used a different color for each line. Photo courtesy of New York Transit Museum
The Transit Museum is celebrating the introduction of the 1972 “Vignelli Map” of the city’s subway system, seen here. It used only straight lines and diagonals rather than representing the actual curves or the subway routes, a schematic that was continued in future maps (although not the current one). The underground Transit Museum at Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn is hosting an exhibit on the Vignelli Map, both inside the museum itself and online.Ī 1958 subway map, known as the Salomon Map, just used three colors, one for each “family” of subway lines - the IND, BMT and IRT (the initials were a reminder of the pre-1940 era when the subways were operated by different companies).
This year is the 50 th anniversary of a colorful, diagrammatic map of the subway system, introduced by the Transit Authority and Unimark International, that’s commonly referred to as the Vignelli Map. I think both of them would be an improvement on the official current MTA map.Every once in a while, MTA New York City Transit, and its predecessor, the NYC Transit Authority, have changed its subway map around, trying to create a map that can make the city’s complicated subway system easier for straphangers to understand. It is interesting to note that both of these experimental New York subway maps are much more simplified than the MTA's current map and remove many of the geographical elements which were deemed to be of high importance for the 1979 redesign. Earlier this year Transit Maps created a New York Subway Map in the Style of the London Underground Map. In 2000 Massimo Vignelli himself created a more simplified subway map for New York. Since 1979 many people have attempted to create a better subway map for New York. However all this geographical detail comes at the cost of simplicity and the New York subway map is consequently very busy and a little hard to read. So, for example, the Siraisi design includes labels for street names and (as the NYT points out) the shape of Central Park's ponds are drawn accurately on the map. The 1979 redesign was intended to reintegrate geographical elements to the map. Vignelli's map (like most transit maps) omitted geographical details for the sake of simplicity. One of the major reasons behind the switch from Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map in 1979 was to create a more geographically accurate map. However while the Times does point out some of the glaring failings of the current MTA map in my eyes it lets the map off way too lightly. The way the map follows the subway lines as the NYT moves from feature to feature is very impressive. The NYT's story map is very impressive in form (if perhaps a little light on critical content). The map also examines some of the additions that have been made over the years to Siraisi's original 1979 design. As you progress through the New York Times' story map the newspaper takes a closer look at some of the design decisions taken by Siraisi in his redesign of the city's transit map and attempts to explain some of the reasons behind those changes. The primary designer responsible for the 1979 redesign of the New York subway map was Nobuyuki Siraisi. It explores some of the reasons why the current map design was introduced in 1979 and some of the problems created by this redesign of the city's subway map. The New York Times' New York Subway Map Like You've Never Seen it Before takes a close look at the MTA's New York subway map.
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