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The Art of Inside Out An in-depth look into the making of Pixar’s upcoming animated film, INSIDE OUT, with a foreward by star Amy Poehler. Learn more | See related books
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Product Details
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (February 11, 2011)
This is a fascinating story that combines two of my passions: New York City and typography. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn how all of the New York City subway signage was designed.
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The typeface Helvetica is surely the only one that has ever had a movie documentary made about it (and it is a good movie!). Some argue that Helvetica is overused, but if this is true, it is only because it has filled an important typographical niche. It is used especially in public places, especially on civic signs, and many people think that it has always been the typeface for signs in the subways of New York. That's not at all possible; Helvetica is a modern typeface created in 1957. That it is now strongly associated with New York subways, however, just shows how it did take over official and unofficial competitors, but its triumph wasn't easy and it wasn't a sure thing. How Helvetica triumphed is not a simple story; it is full of false leads and missed opportunities. In _Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story_ (MIT Press), design historian and lettering artist Paul Shaw has done quite a bit of detective work about the New York subway's history, as well as touching on transportation graphics in general. The book is large in format and quite beautiful; within its 132 pages are 286 photographs of signs, subway stations, type specimens, maps, and advertisements. Anyone who enjoys thinking about graphics, lettering, or transportation history ought to love this book.
The current single network subway was made from a merger of three separate systems in 1940, and each had its own sign system, but no system was internally consistent. The first signs were mosaics on the station walls to show the names of the stations or directions. The labor-intensive tilings were supplemented by enameled and glazed signs on metal, as well as hand-painted and paper signs, with no unity of color, size, or type, and even the mosaic signs were sometimes painted over.Read more ›
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For what it is it is decent. It is a highly technical collaboration and not a book for the typical New York City Transit rail fan unless you're heavily into Transit architecture and graphics. if you are looking for a book showing really cool transit signage in use this is not a book you should get. But if you're looking for a book that over explains every type of transit graphic and font then this book may be of interest to you.
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In truth, this book will really only appeal to two distinct groups. One is those interested in (or studying) industrial design, especially those concerned with signage for transportation systems and/or the influence of government authorities on that design. The other (like myself) is fans of the New York Subway system or of rapid transit systems in general. If you belong to one of these groups, you will find the book well done and fascinating. For everyone else? Well, only you can decide. Perhaps the most interesting facet is the depiction of many of the mosaic and other designs used in the system before the current signage was adopted (and much of which is still in use).
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Non-creative folk might be perplexed to understand how a typeface could generate this many pages but here they are and it's a riveting read. The chapter titled 'Bringing order out of chaos' sets the scene with a brief description of the rather slapdash style of signage on the huge subway system developed over the decades. The next chapter looks at signage in Boston, England and Italy, mostly from the sixties onwards (so Harry Beck's map and Edward Johnston's typeface for the London Underground aren't included). The various transit systems had, by now, settled on a sans face loosely based on Standard Medium and in New York this eventually evolved into Helvetica over the years.
I always thought it odd that designers didn't take Standard Medium plus Bold or other sans (the Franklins, News Gothic, Venus et cetera) and just use them without modification. Letter and line spacing seems as important as the typeface in signage. The examples shown in the book have all been made into new faces. Maybe designers feel they must leave their individuality on these projects.
It wasn't until the mid-sixties that the MTA people decided to get to grips with a unified type, graphics and signage system. Unimark's Massimo Vinelli suggested ideas but amazingly, because of money problems, not too much came of the recommendations. It seems clear though that whatever outsiders suggested would have problems because of the way signs were produced. The Transit Authority had their own internal unit for making signs and the type stencils for some of these were actually cut by hand. Design manuals specifying all sorts of character and spacing refinements evaporated in reality.Read more ›
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This item: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story
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