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Title
New York City Subway

Designer
Bob Noorda

Firm
Unimark International

Year
1966

Client
MTA – Metropolitan Transit Authority

Medium
Signage

Notes
In 1966 the New York City Transit Authority hired the Italian-American firm Unimark International to redesign the entire subway signage. Bob Noorda, who a few years before successfully developed the signage for the Milan Metro, was put in charge of the design. He spent four years studying the subway lines and the fluxes of passengers, eventually defining a modular system and a visual code that allowed to communicate with great clarity and to distinguish the different levels of information. The signage design is based on a square module that can be repeated up to 8 times, while all typographic information was set in AG Old Face, at that time known as Standard Medium in the USA, officially substituted by Helvetica in 1989. The original design—implemented starting from 1967—used white background panels with black texts but it was soon changed to black panels with white texts on a client’s request. Once completed, the entire project of the signage was codified through a Graphics Standards Manual. The design of the signage is still today one of the best-known and most appreciated projects in the history of graphic design. [NMM]

Title
New York City Subway

Designer
Bob Noorda

Firm
Unimark International

Year
1966

Client
MTA – Metropolitan Transit Authority

Medium
Signage

Notes
In 1966 the New York City Transit Authority hired the Italian-American firm Unimark International to redesign the entire subway signage. Bob Noorda, who a few years before successfully developed the signage for the Milan Metro, was put in charge of the design. He spent four years studying the subway lines and the fluxes of passengers, eventually defining a modular system and a visual code that allowed to communicate with great clarity and to distinguish the different levels of information. The signage design is based on a square module that can be repeated up to 8 times, while all typographic information was set in AG Old Face, at that time known as Standard Medium in the USA, officially substituted by Helvetica in 1989. The original design—implemented starting from 1967—used white background panels with black texts but it was soon changed to black panels with white texts on a client’s request. Once completed, the entire project of the signage was codified through a Graphics Standards Manual. The design of the signage is still today one of the best-known and most appreciated projects in the history of graphic design. [NMM]