If you select a subway line, it pops out in bright color and the rest of the map recedes into gray. This shower curtain is based on the 2012 MTA New York City Subway Diagram designed by Vignelli Associates. If you want to get a good look at what all the fuss is about, then you should consider stopping by the 57th Street subway station, where a vintage Vignelli map has been uncovered. All rights reserved. Designer Massimo Vignelli's clean modern lines and bold colors changed the branding of the subway in 1972 and elevated the map to the level of modern art. Though Vignelli’s Subway Map is not used officially, his concept of subway map design gets passed down in New York City. On August 7, 1972, the Vignelli subway map was published. In August 1972, the MTA unveiled a drastically different subway map designed by Vignelli. However, IRT maps did not show Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) routes; conversely, BMT maps did not show IRT routes, even after the Dual Contracts between the IRT and BMT. Gothamist is a website about New York City news, arts and events, and food, brought to you by New York Public Radio. 500 signed prints were made available through the … (Looking at dozens of blinking dots, you realize how much of the system is under repair.) A year ago, the M.T.A. Peter Lloyd uncovers the history of the Vignelli map that includes the legacy of the people who created and promoted this New York icon—as well as those who hastened its demise. Its obsessive clarity turns out to be the perfect basis for digital information. arrow To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories. Massimo Vignelli's subway diagram is a hallmark of modernist elegance, distilling New York's huge, complicated transit system into a sequence of straight lines, rainbow colors and black dots.   Comment below or Send us a Tip. This very detailed map of the New York Subway system, was designed by the Italian American designer, Massimo Vignelli. Forgotten NY spotted it there this week, in the same place he spotted it in 1999 (we also noticed it in 2010)... so it's just never been taken down. When you select a station, the map zooms in, and a short message pops up. And why has the M.T.A. Sign up for our newsletter! Downloadable maps for New York transit, including subways, buses, and the Staten Island Railway, plus the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and MTA Bridges and Tunnels. Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps. The Vignelli map wasn’t radical—it owed a great deal to the famous London Underground map of 1933 by Henry Beck, an updated version of which is still in use. Of course, you're more likely to need to check the status of the subway system when you're moving around the city, not sitting at your desk. Measures 72x72 inches; Care: Wipe clean with a damp cloth Vignelli, who turned eighty this year, and his colleagues Beatriz Cifuentes and Yoshiki Waterhouse, have even made concessions to earlier criticisms. And because of the protective plexiglass, no one has stolen it. For most of the nineteen-seventies, the official route map of the New York City subway system was a beautiful thing. This is also the station where The Ramones shot the cover art for their Subterranean Jungle album. The Vignelli map never really went away, though. And Central Park was a green rectangle! New York City Subway Map. decided to use the new Vignelli map solely as a weekend amenity? $19.99 On the Weekender (a silly name that sounds like a promotion at an upstate bed-and-breakfast) each station is marked by a black dot, as on the 1972 map, but the dots at stations with service changes blink. Those dots are just too small and too close together, and you need to expand the image to make much use of it. © 2020 New York Public Radio. The map is large and readable, and it expands to fill the screen. Original maps for the privately opened Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), which opened in 1904, showed subway routes as well as elevated routes. Vignelli Transit Maps describes the history of the New York subway maps and follows this city's transportation growth from separate, independent lines to one large system. That bothered a lot of people (even though the London map has always done the same thing) and so the map was replaced, in 1979, by a subway map that more accurately reflected the geography at street level, but which is actually harder to navigate. 1972 Vignelli Subway Map from 16.99 1972 modernist subway map by designer, Massimo Vignelli who also designed the New York City Transit Authority’s Graphic Standards Manual in 1970. If you are lucky, it says, “No scheduled work affecting service at this station.” If there are disruptions, you get further details, including alternate routes. More than iconic, the New York City subway map is a coat of arms for a way of life. 1972 Vignelli subway diagram designed by Massimo Vignelli on behalf of the MTA. Vignelli would later use that typeface in a 1972 map of the New York City subway, itself celebrating its 45th anniversary this year; alas, that didn’t go over quite as well. The map is as handsome as ever. Now that people at the M.T.A. These Vignelli subway socks are the chicest portable subway map yet. Instead, mta.info has a split personality. First Look: New York’s Digital Subway Map Comes Alive Today In 2004, Michael Bierut of Pentagram wrote an eloquent homage to it, and in 2007 Gary Hustwit’s documentary “Helvetica” spread knowledge of the map beyond design historians. The first map is that by Massimo Vignelli, who simplified the snaking subway system into a clean diagram which traded geographic literality for graphical clarity. 1944 NEW YORK CENTRAL Visitor Guide Manhattan Subway Map Hotels Restaurants Ads. It reminds me, in fact, of the post-Vignelli subway map—accurate in a literal sense, but with too much information presented in no clear hierarchy of importance, so you end up feeling confused, not enlightened. When designer Massimo Vignelli’s redesigned New York City subway map appeared in 1972, people were less than enthusiastic. Graphic designers turned it into something approaching an object of worship. It's a tool for 5 million riders a day. And, occasionally, it changes. Now, in what you might call a bow to the ongoing life of the Vignelli map, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has brought Vignelli back to create an interactive map based on his original that shows changes in weekend-subway service. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Vintage 1976 New York Subway Map System Guide Massimo Vignelli MoMA. It showed the transit system as a series of straight lines that sometimes veered at 45 degree angles, rather than a more realistic tangle of curved paths. World—And especially New York—would not be what it is without Vignelli’s elegantly rigorous touch regarded... Still, the MTA unveiled a drastically different subway map for the 2008. 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