'Tis a sad day for fans of Helvetica.
Sunday's New York Times contained a noteworthy obituary about Bob Noorda, the graphic designer who created New York City's Modernist -- and now-iconic -- subway graphic style. The NYT recalls:
Mr. Noorda’s best-known work in the United States was for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which in 1966 commissioned his firm, Unimark International, to modernize and unify the look of the subway system’s signs. The firm had been recommended by Mildred Constantine, an influential design curator at the Museum of Modern Art.
At the time, Mr. Noorda was based in Milan overseeing the firm’s European projects. But the M.T.A. commission lured him to New York, where his design partner Massimo Vignelli had opened a Unimark office.
“I remember when Bob came to New York and spent every day underground in the subway to record the traffic flow in order to determine the points of decision where the signs should be placed,” Mr. Vignelli said in an interview.
The existing signs they encountered were cluttered with various typefaces of different sizes.
“Their system was a mess,” Mr. Noorda was quoted as saying in “Unimark International: The Design of Business and the Business of Design” (Lars Müller), a recently published book by Jan Conradi. “Sometimes pieces of paper taped to the wall were the only indication for the station.
The Times continues:
[Unimark] was among the first international design firms to base their work on the Modernist principle that a good design could have a positive effect on all aspects of life, not just on business. An early proponent of unified branding — the consistent use of distinctive type and imagery to identify a company — Unimark has been credited with awakening the corporate world to Modernist design thinking.
Unimark became identified with the austere Helvetica typeface. “For better or worse,” Ms. Conradi wrote, the firm became “a prime contributor to Helvetica’s ubiquitous appearance in corporate identities around the world.”
Bob Noorda Is Dead at 82; Designer Took Modernism Underground (New York Times)
I found that they do not always follow Bob's standards these days:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplesimon/2528976619/
Simon
Posted by: Simon | 26 January 2010 at 08:57 PM
I believe the font used on the NYC subway is not Helvetica, but Accidenz Grotesk. It is similar to Helvetica but not identical.
Posted by: Scott Mercer | 04 February 2010 at 11:59 AM