At the same time that Milano was opening the first line of its new metro system and Boston was overhauling its T, the New York City subway was still bumbling along. But the 1964 / 1965 World’s Fair in Flushing pressured the TA to improve its image and information graphics. They commissioned a new logo from Sundberg-Ferar, an industrial design firm responsible for designing a new subway car, and they created special strip maps (set in Futura) for use on the no. 7 Flushing Line. The TA also decided to hold a competition for a new map. [21] The 1964 NYCTA map competition was apparently the idea of Len Ingalls, Director of Public Information and Community Relations at the agency, who was eager to see if the London Underground map’s color coding could be applied to the New York City subway map. The contest – which was judged by Harmon H. Goldstone (1911–2001), head of the New York City Planning Commission, and Jerry Donovan, cartographer for Time magazine – drew only nine entries. Four were awarded $ 3,000 prizes but none were chosen as a winner. The best of them, Raleigh D’Adamo’s submission, emulated London’s sevencolor coding system but was deemed “too complex for general use.” Goldstone later said that there was no winner “because a good map is not possible for a system which lacks intellectual order and precision.” In the wake of this disaster, Prof. Stanley A. Goldstein (b. 1923), a professor of engineering at Hofstra University, was hired as a consultant in January 1965 to devise a map that would successfully solve the color-coding problem posed by New York City’s tangled subway system. Six months later he submitted a 39-page report entitled “Methods of Improving Subway information” that went beyond ideas for a new map to include suggestions on “train designations, car information and station information.” Goldstein’s recommendations did not bear immediate fruit, but they set in motion the events that eventually led the NYCTA to hire Unimark International. [22] The new Milano Metro finally came to the notice of the American design community in 1965. Industrial designer William Lansing Plumb, in the September / October 1965 issue of Print, compared the London, Milano and New York – but not Boston – subway systems. He angrily described the latter as “grimy, dingy and slumlike,” complaining that the original beauty of the mosaic decorations of Heins & LaFarge and Vickers had been covered over in the intervening decades by dirt and grime, by advertising and by newer signs (� Fig. 76). Plumb also criticized the new TA logo by Sundberg-Ferar as dated. In contrast he praised Noorda’s graphics – including his use of a “modified grotesque” typeface – for the Metropolitana Milanese, suggesting that they could be applied to New York City. Plumb’s suggestion proved prescient. [23] In late 1965 Massimo Vignelli (b. 1931), a Milanese graphic designer, moved to New York City. He had come to the United States to head up the New York office of Unimark International, an inter national design consultancy established earlier that year. The firm was the brainchild of Vignelli and Ralph Eckerstrom (1921–1996), former design director of Container Corporation of America (CCA). The two men, who had first met in Chicago in 1958 while Vignelli was teaching at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Tech nology on a Moholy-Nagy Fellowship, shared a similar philosophy of design. In establishing Unimark they sought to wed American marketing to European modernist design. Along with Vignelli and Eckerstrom, the other founding partners of the firm were Bob Noorda, Jay Doblin, James K. Fogleman, and Larry Klein. Herbert Bayer, the former Bauhausler, served as a consultant, giving Unimark immediate legitimacy. [24] Within months of Vignelli’s arrival in New York, Unimark gained a plum assignment. New maps meant new signs. In May 1966 the NYCTA, on the recommendation of the Museum of Modern Art, hired the firm to advise it on signage and to assess Prof. Goldstein’s report. The recommendation came from Mildred Constantine (1913–2008), Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA. It is likely that the Transit Authority turned to Constantine because of her longstanding interest in signs and her intimate knowledge of graphic design. She curated the exhibition Signs in the Street at MoMA in 1954 and later co-authored Sign Language for Buildings and Landscape. She was on the Board of Directors of the AIGA and was very familiar with graphic design firms, especially the nascent Unimark. Constantine had met both Vignelli and Eckerstrom in 1959 when all three served as jurors on the Art Directors Club of Chicago competition. And, most important of all, she was aware of Noorda’s graphics for the Metropolitana Milanese from having served in 1964 on the United States selection committee for the 13th Triennale di Milano. Unimark had the connections and it had the experience. [25]
21. The opening of Shea Stadium in 1965 was a second reason for the creation of the no. 7 strip maps. Their design was cribbed from the London Underground. Examples can be seen in Subway Style, p. 175. Sundberg-Ferar was established in Walled Lake, Michigan in 1934 by Carl W. Sundberg (1911–1982) and Montgomery Ferar (1910–1982).They designed several subway cars for the Budd Company. new.idsa.org. The logo they designed consisted of an intertwined lowercase blue t and red a sloped to the right. 22. Details of the 1964 map competition are from Neil Sheehan, “Subways a Maze to Uninitiated,” New York Times, Septem ber 18, 1964; “3 Win Transit Authority Prizes for Designs of Subway Maps,” New York Times, October 17, 1964; and Peter Blake, “Get Off at N, 1, 2, 3, 7, SS, QB, RR, NX, EE – The Crossroads of the World,” New York Magazine, April 8, 1968, p. 108. They have been confirmed by Prof. Stanley A. Goldstein. Stanley A. Goldstein to author, 6 August 2008. See also Harmon Goldstone in “Transportation Graphics.” Dot Zero 5 (Fall 1968), p. 44. Information on Len Ingalls’ role comes from John Tauranac. John Tauranac to author, 11 August 2008. Leonard Ingalls was a former reporter for the New York Times who was appointed Director of Public Information and Community Relations at the TA in July 1964, a position he held through the end as a winner. The best of them, Raleigh D’Adamo’s submission, emulated London’s sevencolor coding system but was deemed “too complex for general use.” Goldstone later said that there was no winner “because a good map is not possible for a system which lacks intellectual order and precision.” In the wake of this disaster, Prof. Stanley A. Goldstein (b. 1923), a professor of engineering at Hofstra University, was hired as a consultant in January 1965 to devise a map that would successfully solve the color-coding problem posed by New York City’s tangled subway system. Six months later he submitted a 39-page report entitled “Methods of Improving Subway information” that went beyond ideas for a new map to include suggestions on “train designations, car information and station information.” Goldstein’s recommendations did not bear immedi ate fruit, but they set in motion the events that eventually led the NYCTA to hire Unimark International. [22] of the 1970s. Peter B. Lloyd kindly shared with me R. Raleigh D’Adamo’s copy of the competition guidelines issued by the New York City Transit Authority, July 30, 1964. Prof. Stanley A. Goldstein, who had an interest in mathematical puzzles, was recommended to the TA by a mutual friend at the New York City Planning Commission. His report made the following recommendations for a new map to replace the Salomon-derived existing one: 1. letters and numbers should be used to designate all routes – the IRT already had numbered lines and the IND lettered ones, but the BMT had neither; 2. each of the 36 lines should be rendered in one of six colors; 3. the underlying geographic shapes should better represent the contours of New York City – with some distortion allowed out of a need to maintain maximum clarity; 4. some slight alterations to the strict angles of lines should be allowed to fix erroneous relationships among lines and stations; 5. stations should be indicated by colored geometric shapes that distinguish between express and local stops; and 6. lettering should be in black and in a typeface that is the most legible. Goldstein’s six colors were taken from the Munsell Color System which was the industrial standard at the time. For further information on the Munsell Color System see Joy Turner Luke, The Munsell Color System A Language for Color (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1996). (The Pantone Matching System was not as widely established then as it is today.) The recommended “type font” was “Navy Aeronautical Medical Equipment Laboratory Letters and Numerals, (MIL-C-18012)” or something equivalent that had a line widthto-height ratio of 1:6 and a letter width-to-height ratio of 65:1. Stanley A. Goldstein, “Methods of Improving Subway Information,” New York City Transit Authority, 1965, pp. 9, 15, 21–22, 27 and 29. 23. Plumb (1965), p. 13. Plumb’s article was a follow-up to an appearance he made on WNBC-TV’s “New York Illustrated” in 1965 to discuss “New York subways as a design environment.” Plumb was not alone in his views about the New York City subway. In February 1967 Mayor John V. Lindsay’s Task Force on Urban Design, led by David A. Crane, released its report. “The Threatened City: A Report on the Design of the City of New York by the Mayor’s
Slanted 18 — Essays and Reports
Paul Shaw, P 153
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