I love NYC Subway signage so much I even based part of my architecture thesis project on it. The signage system is not one man’s effort, but a collaboration of designers and workers (and committee members) over time.

I was at the lecture last night, on “Unimark International and the New York Subway System”, which talked about the signage system and how it came along.

Out of the whole panel, Massimo Vignelli, one of the designers of Unimark International back in the 1960s who designed the signage system, is the sharpest critic of them all. Their research was extensive and very innovative by the 1960’s standards, for there was hardly any signage system of such scale back in the days, besides highway signs.

Paul Shaw, an art historian who extensively researched the signage system of the subway, also knows what he is talking about, and he talked us through the history of the new modernized signs in the past 50 years. You can read more about his research in his excellent book, “Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story”.

They talked about the difficulties of implementing the system. One was funding, and the other was bureaucracy. The aesthetics part was easy, but the implementation was difficult. And as a result, a whole signage manual was created to ensure the process. However, the signage system did not get implemented systemwide until 1980s, when corporate culture came around and NYCTA understood the need to unify their image.

Implementation was the hard part, as Michael Hertz, one of the people responsible for the 1979 subway map, pointed out. I applaud his team for not being a theorist and doing the grunt work, but am disappointed by the fact that NYCTA did re-hire Vignelli for signage systems. The fact that the new designers did not defend for simplicity further decays the usefulness of the map and signs, by clogging them with less direct and less useful information. I call that a feature creep.

When asked about the new electronic signs lacking color, which is extremely important to differentiating between subway lines, the future designers of signage system offered no solutions, but instead over-optimistically hoping future electronic signs will have colors. They also pointed out that electronic signs require coordination between more departments, such as people responsible for building trains. Well, if that’s the case, I believe they should be more proactive in defending their signage system, and not just lament about it.

Most surprisingly, while the panel complained and was perplexed by why and when the signs were changed from black on white to white on black, an employee from the sign shop, John, stood up and defended for the team. He stated a very good reason for such change: dirt. All in a sudden, the pragmatism of cleaning triumphs aesthetics and cleaning. In dirt we trust!

It was funny because all the graphic designers on stage blamed how the people at the sign shop did not fully understand the system they devised, but it was exactly the people at the sign shop who actually understood all the nuances that required all the exceptions of the Manual (or ‘bible’) to be made. Talk about the gap between experts who would not touch a dirty tool and workers who do things hands on.

I learnt a lot from what Vignelli had said about his signage design, and it helps me justify the new icon system I am going to implement for Trillian. Unified signage clarifies the system and reduces the need for redundancy, and also helps user to learn the system in long run.

At the end of the lecture, I told Massimo that I am a big fan of his work. He replied, “I’m a big fan of your hair, too!” Funny man.