Introduction
One of my favorite Youtube videos is an informative piece of media created for the New York Times called How Did New York’s Trains Get So Bad? In this video, the NYT reminds it’s viewers how intricate and massive a creation the subway is; there are 665 miles of track, 472 stations, and 27 subway lines. This video is responsible for my curiosity regarding the NYC subway.
Process
For this project in particular I wondered what the idea for the first few subway maps looked like, how did they begin to represent the subway and how did the addition of new lines influence how the redesign would appear? How much would have to change, how much visual information did change, before we were presented with the current NYC subway map?
I began this process by skimming the New York City subway map wikipedia and noted particular names and dates I thought might be more relevant to the shaping of the map than others. I didn’t have any scrap paper at the time so I wrote my notes in an unused planner, I later organized the information on a separate sheet.
Software
The tool I used for this project is Timeline js, a tool made usable by the Northwestern University Knight Lab. They advertise their tool as being able to provide the groundwork for ‘easy-to-make,’ beautiful timelines. This was true! I was able to generate the timeline pretty easily with their service, the explanations and the google spreadsheet were fairly intuitive.
The only difficulty I had was with the media. I tried to store my images on imgur and use the direct link to import my pictures. It didn’t work. I used this website, https://postimages.org, as recommended to me by my peer review group.
Results
I’m satisfied with the outcome of my timeline, I decided to omit some information that might be considered important to the design evolution of the map, such as the work of Massimo Vignelli. I made this choice because his map (released in 1972) was met with frustration and confusion from the public and riders didn’t appreciate the geographical inaccuracies and design liberties (re: color) that he took. I tried to only include work that has helped to improve the map, rather than work that (while beautiful and interesting) did not receive positive feedback from subway riders.
Though there was no single, unified map at the time of its inception, I thought it was important to include a rendering of the first map created by the Interborough Rapid Transit company, despite the fact that it doesn’t represent the full scope of the subways reach. The IRT came before the other two companies, which is why I chose their map to highlight the first bit of history. I chose the color
My group feedback influenced my decision to change the slide titles to be more specific. For example, my slide about George Salomon was titled ‘George Salomon’ and my peers advised me to elaborate. Additionally, rather than have light backgrounds for the slides which I found more visually appealing, they noticed that they could not see the white lettering on the light-blue slides. This feedback was very helpful in reformatting my timeline to be more user friendly.
I selected my color choices from a beautiful website called The Day’s Color and tried to keep them cohesive (relative to the schemes available on the site) however needing to darken some background colors did change that. The subway’s official font is Helvetica which is why I chose Helvetica for my timeline font.
Reflections
I believe my work was successful, I was able to identify major events in the lifetime of the subway map and find images that corresponded to those milestones. I enjoyed learning about the complications each designer or firm faced and how often changes were implemented. I tried to summarize the changes concisely in my timeline. If I had more time I might build out the timeline to include more visuals however that might become excessive or exhaustive so perhaps I’d only include a few more less significant milestones such as the map following the Chrystie Street connection or one of Hagstrom’s maps in the 40’s that included a lot more geographic detail.
Aesthetically I’m a bit disappointed, I wished to use lighter colors and I couldn’t figure out how to change the font color in timeline js, instead I changed the background colors and even though I played around a bit, I’m still unsatisfied with the two lighter colors I replaced.
Before I began research for this project I had conflated accuracy and usability as being a one in the same idea. However, I realize that sometimes the concept of accuracy regarding design can vary, as with the current subway map, and still produce an accessible result.
References
(n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/photos/new-subway-poster?image=1
Adler, J. (n.d.). New York City Local News, Food, Arts & Events. Gothamist: New York City Local News, Food, Arts & Events. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/photos/subway-map-creators-are-gathering-to-hash-out-a-century-of-design-disagreements
Byrnes, M. (2015, March 11). A Lost Design for a NYC Subway Map, Rediscovered. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-11/a-lost-design-for-a-nyc-subway-map-rediscovered
Calcagno, M., & Demo, B. (n.d.). nycsubway.org: Main Page. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Main_Page
de Luca, A., & Portis, S. (2019, December 2). The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before (Published 2019). The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/nyregion/nyc-subway-map.html
Genzlinger, N. (2020, February 25). Michael Hertz — You’ve Surely Seen His Subway Map — Dies at 87 (Published 2020). The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/nyregion/michael-hertz-dead.html
stevens, p. (2020, October 22). MTA launches live new york subway map to show trains moving in real-time. Designboom. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.designboom.com/design/mta-live-new-york-subway-map-trains-real-time-work-co-10-22-2020/
Towards a Better Way: The “Vignelli” Map at 50. (n.d.). New York Transit Museum. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.nytransitmuseum.org/vignelli/
Untitled. (n.d.). School of Computing – University of Kent. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/metromap/papers/NYC-subway-map-catalog.pdf