How New York City subways signage evolved from a "visual mess" to a
uniform system with Helvetica triumphant. For years, the signs in
the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodge-podge of
lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages.
The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a
variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements,
were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the
years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to
spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to
untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city
transit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to
create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results
today in the white-on-black signs throughout the subway system,
displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp
Helvetica. This book tells the story of how typographic order
triumphed over chaos. The process didn't go smoothly or quickly. At
one point New York Times architecture writer Paul Goldberger
declared that the signs were so confusing one almost wished that
they weren't there at all. Legend has it that Helvetica came in and
vanquished the competition. Paul Shaw shows that it didn't happen
that way-that, in fact, for various reasons (expense, the
limitations of the transit authority sign shop), the typeface
overhaul of the 1960s began not with Helvetica but with its
forebear, Standard (AKA Akzidenz Grotesk). It wasn't until the
1980s and 1990s that Helvetica became ubiquitous. Shaw describes
the slow typographic changeover (supplementing his text with more
than 250 images-photographs, sketches, type samples, and
documents). He places this signage evolution in the context of the
history of the New York City subway system, of 1960s transportation
signage, of Unimark International, and of Helvetica itself.
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