Geometry vs. Geography: Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York City Subway Map

Thamer Abanami:

Welcome to With Intent, a podcast from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech about how design permeates our world, whether we call it design or not. My name is Thamer Abanami, and I’m joined by Albert Shum, and we are your hosts for With Intent’s third season.

 

Albert Shum:

This season, we explore the stories and lessons from several designs featured in IDs list of 100 Greatest Designs, published by Fortune magazine in 2020. We’ll discuss how the concepts of intentional, responsible and innovative design intersects with these designs. Thamer, what’s our topic for today?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Today’s episode is a story of geometry versus geography. The 1972 New York City subway map by Massimo Vignelli, a design that was both hailed as a triumph and also regarded as a failure. Where should we start? We’ll have to go back a bit and tell the story of the New York City subway itself. In 1904 it opened as the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, or the IRT. A second company joins the fray in 1923 called the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, BMT, and then a third company called the Independent Subway System, IND, was established in 1932. So you had three different subway companies with tunnels, cars, also acquiring above-ground tracks and lines, and it created a cacophony.

 

Albert Shum:

So these are all different systems.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yes, they’re all different systems. Some of them had tunnels where the other trains (from other systems) couldn’t fit. They all had different maps. The maps didn’t show the other company’s stations. It was quite a mess, and it was quite a venture trying to navigate these three systems, such that in 1940 these three companies were unified under municipal control, under the Board of Transportation. And then following that, in 1953 the New York City Transit Authority was created, which is still in existence today. Yeah, today we have something called the MTA.

 

In 1931, there was a famous Underground map done for the City of London, for the London Underground, and it was done by Harry Beck, a draftsman, and he pioneered what’s called the “diagram approach” in metro maps.

 

Albert Shum:

It seems like this is the first time I think design really jumps in to create a new way to help people navigate and find where they need to go, having more of an abstract approach, you know, instead of a representational approach. And as you know, Thamer, I’m a big fan of the Mercator projection for mapping, as a map geek, but that’s not really efficient when you try and whereas, I think especially in a subway, you don’t necessarily see where the train is going, you don’t see landmarks. So the problem is very different than a typical navigation map that you might use for on the road services, right?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Totally. You know this being the first of many, one of its hallmarks is this 90 and 45 degree lines, and this took off like wildfire across the world, and many transit systems implemented similar maps using these kinds of abstractions.

 

Albert Shum:

So in some ways, it started creating the standard representation. This new visual, diagrammatic approach became the standard for subway transit maps.

 

Thamer Abanami:

In many ways, yeah, not necessarily the exact Harry Beck approach. Some of them use circles and angles, but really, you saw a lot of extreme abstraction and diagram type maps for subway systems. And while other cities were advancing, New York had lagged in modernizing its map and modernizing its subway. You know, 1970 there was a New York Times article that caught my eye during the research for this episode. It was titled, “Subway Slum.” This gives you an idea.

 

Albert Shum: 

Sounds like a real positive spin on it. Subways.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Well, the New York Times is a great reference to kind of look at the history of the New York subway, and they did not pull any punches. Here’s a quote from the article: “The sheer bad graphics and classic confusion of subway signs and maps, the atrocious obstacle race of concessions, the wrongheadedness of so many quote, unquote improvements make it almost seem as if the whole grotesque thing were put together by vindictive underground gremlins. Well, it’s not gremlins, it’s the Transit Authority.”

 

Albert Shum:

I do like to use the term “atrocious obstacle.” I’ve had some people call my design and my design approach similar.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yes, I’ve heard it within my earshot. In fact, we’ll protect the innocent, though not discuss those topics. And so I think as part of the setup here, the environment was ripe for a designer to come to the rescue and enter Massimo Vignelli. Albert, can you tell us a little bit about Massimo Vignelli?

 

Albert Shum:

Massimo, who was born in Italy in 1931 during a lot of progressive movements in design, he actually taught at an Institute of Design in Chicago in the 60s. So I think this whole modern movement, starting with Bauhaus, really drove a lot of modern design in the beginning of the century. And as a proponent of modernist and Swiss design, he had a strong sense that modernism helped shape but also helped simplify the world. And he established a company called Unimark International in 1965, which was the firm that built on these modernist philosophies and followed the work of Bauhaus designers like Herbert Beyer. And it really represented that the designer can create the standard but also create a system emphasizing the grid system, creating organization of information, creating visual hierarchy. Obviously, a lot of us listeners probably are familiar with Helvetica as part of the font system that was used for a lot of modernist design and used also by Unimark designers. And the firms specialize in designing corporate identity systems, which are still actually in use today with clients like American Airlines, Ford, Motor Company, Gillette, and of course, in this episode, we’re talking about Unimark and Massimo’s work with New York Transit Authority. So I really feel like Massimo, in some ways, is one of the founders of the modern design movement that’s still in use today.

 

Thamer Abanami:

It’s a perfect setup, really, especially at the time I think New York was looking across the Atlantic at cities like Milano and looking up north at cities like Boston that had implemented really beautiful wayfinding systems and maps and brand integrated. And so we find ourselves with Unimark and Vignelli, before being asked to do a map, they were asked to do a system wide implementation guide for station wayfinding. And this was in 1970, and there was a lot of observational analysis and decision tree development. Bob Norda, who was a member and a partner at Unimark International, had done the Milan work, and was involved heavily in this work. And they created a beautiful design system for wayfinding, and it was captured in a manual called “The Standards Manual,”, and if you can find a copy, grab it if you’re a designer, because it’s just really a great example of systems thinking applied to graphic design and wayfinding.

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah, and my recollection was it was not just like a bunch of guidelines, it was actually a system where every element was considered, and it actually show how things would be implemented, everything from, you know, the signage to how big the scale and the kerning of the font and letter set, I feel like, at least for me, it was the first time I saw, wow, this is the way you create a system rather than just a guideline.

 

Thamer Abanami:

100%. And they did not use Helvetica for this despite popular stories there, they didn’t have the ability to use Helvetica at that time for signage at that scale, because the American print shops had yet to adopt Helvetica, which was still kind of making its way to United States in more than smaller print formats. And so they went with the typeface choice of Standard, which I believe is derived from Akzidenz-Grotesk. I think. I don’t know if that… was that the correct pronunciation, Albert?

 

Albert Shum:

Sounds good to me!

 

Thamer Abanami:

And on the strength of that work, Massimo and Unimark were hired to solve this map problem, right?

 

Albert Shum:

So they weren’t asked to do the map first. It was actually the wayfinding first, right, in the station?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah. And that was kind of the first project, and that project wrapped. Now historically, we mentioned there were three separate systems that were merged in 1940, that meant three separate maps. There were attempts at unification after the merger of these three separate systems, there were even design competitions to kind of find a way out. And I remember, I think, in 1969 there was a design competition where there were nine entrants and none of them won. Three were given partial prize money and the chairman of the committee, the judging committee said, “The problem is just too complex.” And an example that complexity is the system is complex. There are line switches, there’s local express service, there are weekend changes, there are multiple lines that will share some tunnels part time and then branch out into their own tunnels. And it is not only complex in space, it is complex in time, right? This is a dynamic problem, and the design was basically trying to apply simplification in the most extreme, focused and systematic way to something very complex.

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah, and I think the word “complexity” sometimes I do feel like design has this almost idealized belief that, “Oh, we could come up with a design that solves everything!” Like that there’s a single point of solution, right? Like, versus, well, in order to solve a system, it takes a different approach. And maybe that’s probably the…we could dive deeper into that as kind of continuing on the story of Massimo’s work. What is this system approach?

 

Thamer Abanami:

100% and to be fair to Massimo Vignelli, he had conceived the map itself as a system of maps, that there would be a diagram representation, and then there would be a geographic map for the whole system, and there would be a neighborhood geographic map, and then there would be this index, kind of “From/ To” guide for people who are not visual. And this was, again, you’re dealing with a client that has faced bankruptcy many times, and was likely currently getting into bankruptcy and out of bankruptcy during these engagements, and they had to apply cuts. And some of the cuts that happened were cutting the other maps, and that proved fatal.

 

[Audio Excerpt of MTA Informational Video]

 

Now let’s go back to the release and the announcement of the map by William Ronan, who was the MTA chairman at the time. It was released with fanfare, and he was quoted at the release as saying, “We have tried to make reading the New York subway map as easy as following the Yellow Brick Road.”

 

[Audio excerpt from the movie “The Wizard of Oz”]

 

What do you think about that, Albert?

 

Albert Shum:

I think the Wizard of Oz kind of approach design often sets the wrong expectation. It makes it sound like it’s magical, and it just magically will help you find a way. Whereas I think good design is about making it easier but also providing agency, meaning helping the user navigate on their way, rather than do it for them.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Oh yeah, I think it sets high expectations, and in the crowd that day is a woman by the name of Dr. Arline Bronzaft, who is a professor of psychology and a member of the Subway Service Watchdog Committee, and her reply to William Ronan’s “Yellow Brick Road” comment was this: “This is New York City, not Oz.”. And so I think you start to see immediately some tensions brewing between people who are passionate about getting this map right and the map they saw released in 1972.

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah. And there’s a practicality to it right, I think. And, and I’m sure for listeners who have been to New York, New York is a chaotic city, and there’s so much going on. And when you walk in a station, you’re amongst 1000s of people trying to go their own way, and you only have so much time or attention to find where you need to go in that environment. You really need to help people find their way quickly. Yeah, so that’s the pragmatism part, I think, that sometimes gets lost in the ideal.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, and not only that, but high crime. There was high crime in the 70s, high crime in the subway. And what is the context of this subway user as they’re trying to navigate after their work shift or wherever they are, right? So it is a hard problem, and the context is very sensitive here. And so I mentioned Dr. Bronzaft kind of talk back, or clap back, at the announcement.

 

Albert Shum:

And this was before the invention of Twitter and X, I assume.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, this is before social media. I think the “social media” at the time was in The New York Times, probably, or the smaller newspapers. But there’s a colorful character that embodies this growing discontent towards this map named John Tauranac. And this guy is a writer, and he wrote tour guides that were sanctioned by the city, and he had to explore this map issue in a way that he could help people understand how to use the subway system. He ultimately was the head of what is called the MTA Map Committee that was created in 1975 and it had some citizen activists. It had people like John Tauranac, it had people like Dr. Arline Bronzaft, and it had, as its map makers or designers, Michael Hertz Associates, which was a design firm, and they had worked on developing an alternative and trying to get this alternative to be a replacement.

 

Albert Shum:

So let me get that right. So there was, there was actually quite a bit of pushback, if not intense pushback, on the Vignelli map, when his release to the point where this committee was formed to create a better map, would that be it…?

 

Thamer Abanami:

You know, I think that that is partially accurate. I think it’s a complicated story in that you had a group of people who were kind of against it from the start, so they weren’t brought in. They didn’t like it from the first get go, and they didn’t, they didn’t accept it. And I think there was kind of an anti modernism undercurrent in some of this as well. And to be fair to the committee, I think that also they, they had goals of trying to help New Yorkers navigate right but I think you can’t separate from that, this kind of diametric opposition between modernists and people who were kind of anti modernist or illustrative, and that was kind of what was happening on in the design world at that time in the United States.

 

Albert Shum:

So what happens next with the committee?

 

Thamer Abanami:

So the committee ends up prototyping these maps, and Dr. Bronzaft was actually testing them. She was doing user testing with college and high school students, and they were seeing 70% success rates with this new map versus the Vignelli map.

 

Albert Shum:

So they were taking more of a, what I dare to say, more user-centric approach.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, I would say there was a lot more acceptance testing or usability, quote, unquote testing in this work than there was, from what we can find in the research on the Vignelli work, the Vignelli work, really, the client was reviewing the work, and the client also had its own constraints around how much you wanted to spend and do on acceptance testing. And so this kind of tension between these two factions culminates in this moment where there was an actual debate at Cooper Union called “The Great New York Subway Map Debate,” where Vignelli and his allies showed up and John Tauranac and the map committee crew showed up and they got on stage and they hashed it out in a debate.

 

Albert Shum:

So this was an open debate. It was not a closed room. So it was in public.

 

Thamer Abanami:

It was in public. And, we have Gary Hustwit, filmmaker who did the film Helvetica. He also did a great short film called The Map about this topic. And he found the Cooper Union archives. He found these lost tapes, and so he created a transcript of this debate with some other materials, like photos from the debate, and published it in a book called “The Great New York City Subway Map Debate.”

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah, what did they say? And yeah, I’m curious.

 

Thamer Abanami:

There’s a lot of good quotes here. I’ll just kind of give you a few. So this is Vignelli talking about the alternative map that the MTA map committee was prototyping and developing. This is in Vignelli’s voice. “It seems to me that the total lack of methodology with this which this map shows points out that the basic philosophy which lies underneath that project is, the more you add, the better your communication will be, as it happens in communication, it’s just the other way around.”

 

Albert Shum:

So more is not more, and less is more. Is that right…?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Well, I mean, if you’re gonna abstract, it’s about, there’s a lot of reduction, right?

 

Albert Shum:

Well, it’s also a bit dogmatic. I think this is like, and now I’m gonna show my own biases. You need to balance these different constraints, but also different goals by being dogmatic saying, “Hey, if you keep on adding things, yes, it will create more clutter and it will create more visual noise potentially, but you should only add what you need.” It doesn’t mean just keep on adding, I think, that’s at least my takeaway. And I know there’s a lot of context missing from the quote.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, this was kind of a, you know, both sides let each other have it, and so that was…

 

Albert Shum:

…and who am I to criticize Vignelli? You know…

 

Thamer Abanami:

I’ll include a link to the book, because it has this amazing thank-you letter from Massimo to the moderator, where he talks about this rage he felt being at the debate and thanking the moderator for keeping it civil.

 

Albert Shum:

And kudos for Massimo Vignelli for joining in the debate. I think it takes courage, but also being vulnerable, like you’re putting yourself in your work up there. And I think so often we don’t do that, and it’s kind of like a design crit, and I think it’s important to actually have different points of view, different perspective on your work.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Oh, 100% and I think it shows his humility. And everybody who’s worked with Massimo Vignelli, that I’ve heard work with him, or video that I’ve seen of people who’ve worked with him have nothing but great things to say about him as this gentleman-designer, but I want to cut to John Tauranec words on the Vignelli map, which kind of show that both sides have a lot of criticism for each other. So this is what Tauranec mentions regarding the Vignelli map: “I’m a native, and I know what New York looks like, and it doesn’t look like this. There’s no relationship in this map, between the subway below the streets and the city above. There’s no geographic reality to this map, and it is a little disturbing sometimes.” He goes further and says, “Making the water beige and the parks gray is a certain reflection of a cynical reality.” And that speaks a little bit to what he did in the map. Albert, can you talk about the parks and the water?

 

Albert Shum:

In the Vignelli map, like, this is where I think sometimes the design system can put you in a trap where you’re very focused on making sure it’s consistent with the design system and using every element where, in the abstraction in the Vignelli map, it shows the area where Central Park is, but it shows it in beige color, instead of the well known like most of us even today, look at that map and say, “Oh, that green area that must be a park or trees or…” and that’s the visual metaphor that we’ve come to use and become standard, whereas the Vignelli map was consistent to its design system, but in some ways, it failed to understand the global context, or even making sure that the context was appropriate and represented in the map. And that sometimes you do need to break this design system and I think that’s the tension or the trap you get into.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yes, I think it’s definitely a trap. And so if we kind of revisit what we’ve talked about so far, we’ve mentioned the story, mentioned the Vignelli engagement on wayfinding. We mentioned the map 1972 that Vignelli and Unimark did, and we mentioned the MTA Map Committee developing this alternate map. The tides turn, and this new map, 1978 is adopted, and it’s called the Hertz Map.

 

Albert Shum:

Oh, so the So ultimately, after the debate, they decide we do need a new map, and the Hertz Map is the answer.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, around the time of the debate the tide, behind the scenes, was turning in back offices, and there was traction for this new map.

 

Albert Shum:

Because in some ways, the story sometimes, that part of the story gets lost. I think a lot of people look like, “Oh, the Vignelli map came to be, and it just continued to evolve to what it is today…”

 

Thamer Abanami:

No, and in fact, you know, one could say that if things were different, you could have evolved the Vignelli map to something that was usable. I believe that. But I think it was just the situation was such that there was a lot of momentum on a fresh start, and this fresh start is the 1978 what’s called the Hertz Map…

 

Albert Shum:

Which is still in use today…

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, it’s the one we see every day. Yeah, the map that’s used today is a descendant of this map. It’s still the basic map. They’ve just been tweaking basic things over the last decades, but it is basically all based on this 1978 map, and it was known for its geographical accuracy, even though it was quite abstract in its geography. But a casual viewer will see it as a geographical map: it has a street grid, it had neighborhood representation, it had parks and bodies of water…Parks were green. Water was blue…

 

Albert Shum:

It had curved lines…

 

Thamer Abanami:

…And yes, it didn’t have these 90-degree, 45-degree…

 

Albert Shum:

Wait, isn’t that how the world works: at 90 degrees and 45 degrees?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Well, my theory is they kind of saw in front of an example where abstraction failed to simplify the complex. And I think they wanted to embrace a little bit more complexity, but they also did something interesting. There was some artistry to how this was approached. The primary designer assigned to this redesign at Hertz Associates, was a sculptor and a painter named Nobuyuki Siraisi, and he prepared for the task of representing the lines in a subway map using an unconventional method. He rode every line, every mile, with his eyes closed. He wanted to feel how these lines would feel to the riders, how they would move, how the bends, the turns…

 

Albert Shum:

Oh, wow, yeah, the sensory experience of riding the subway, like that proprioception, where you feel the change in speed and momentum, like the actual, the actual experience of riding a subway,

 

Thamer Abanami:

Totally, and on top of that, you have it balanced with this usability approach of Dr. Bronzaft, and she was very serious about applying usability, and the MTA was trying to accelerate this project as it usually tries (to do), and they said, “We’ve got to ship it. We can’t. No more testing.” And Dr. Bronzaft said, “Okay, if there’s no more testing, I have one request.” And I think this is the contrast of how the Vignelli map was introduced with pomp and circumstance. She wanted this map to be introduced with humility, with an invitation that this is something that will be improved with feedback from the community.

 

Albert Shum:

So it was more of an openness to accept, “Hey, we need to iterate and learn.”

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, and I, you know, I don’t want to take anything away from Vignelli, because I don’t think, I think the situation was such that once that map was delivered, he had no ability to iterate on it. And so when we go back to the Hertz Map, I think that committee had that orientation embedded in its approach.

 

Albert Shum:

And that’s, that’s it. That’s the map we see today, right?

 

Thamer Abanami:

Basically yeah, that’s basically this, this 1978 Hertz Map is the foundation of the map we use today for the New York subway system. And it was adopted in 1979 and replaced Vignelli’s design only after seven years in existence…

 

Albert Shum:

…and then everyone’s happy.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Well, you know, I mean, it’s New York…

 

Albert Shum:

Actually, to be fair, like, I feel like the story doesn’t to me, like, there’s so much to learn. And I think we should really recognize Vignelli’s contribution and his legacy. I feel like he was so seminal in creating that change in New York City’s subway map, but also really bringing the modernist approach that is still in use today, in a lot of our work and a lot of the way we create user experience.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, I would say there’s kind of, “Vignelli lives on.” You know, he sadly passed away a few years ago, but he lives on. Not only does he live on in his work, the actual New York City map he designed in 1972 lives on. There was a map introduced by the MTA for the weekend routes in 2011 and it was based on Vignelli’s design.

 

Albert Shum:

And also parts of the subway actually, most of the subway system, the environmental graphics, the signage system, they’re still part of the Vignelli design system. If you look at the standards, I feel like, wow, that’s still a direct descendant–at least environmental graphics, if not the map representation.

 

[Excerpt of voice recording of Massimo Vignelli]

 

Thamer Abanami:

I want to expand, Albert, with you on modernism in America and Vignelli’s impact there, because you’ve kind of witnessed a lot of this in your work. Can you speak a little bit to this legacy?

 

Albert Shum:

Well, I think Massimo’s work is one of those, I think, and to really break down in terms of lessons learned from the New York City subway map, but if you step back, I think the work that inspired me was Massimo Vignelli’s canon. He actually wrote down his own design philosophy and principles, and I think that’s the lasting power of modernist design, where you can break down and have a very thoughtful approach to design that’s based on principles. Especially in digital experiences today and digital design systems, oftentimes, we create the patterns..we can create the design system, but we lack the principles, the design principles, to apply them.

 

Thamer Abanami:

So this wraps up the story part where we kind of get into the whole historical arc of the map and what came after it, and the legacy. When we actually get into the map itself and kind of take a design eye and do the design analysis, Albert, can you break down the different elements of what makes this map noteworthy as a piece of graphic design, right?

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah, and I did mention the design principles. Couple of things really stand out for me: You look at the New York subway map that Vignelli designed, it’s about the grid, like that’s where it all starts. That’s the foundation. Having that clear grid system that you build your design around, I think that shows discipline, it shows rigor, and it shows craft. I think having clarity in terms of information hierarchy from everything from the color to the typography to all the design elements, that’s another kind of signature of good modernist design. And likewise, with a typeface standard, it just helps abstract, but also helps simplify and remove the clutter. I think the third one, and this is, I think it’s hard to apply. There’s a timelessness to it of modernist design, where, like, you look at the Vignelli map and say, “Oh, that could be used today.” And you think about that, like, 1972 how many years ago? I can’t count. And that timeless character of modernist design is something that I’ve learned to appreciate. But also, timelessness doesn’t mean, “Hey, you want to make it last forever,” but it’s also within different, shifting taste, shifting cultures, there’s a universality too. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to communicate…

 

Thamer Abanami:

So we talked about the story, we did a little bit of a design analysis on the map. I want to zoom out and discuss some perspective on the story. And as part of our research for this episode, we had the opportunity to speak with a designer who had been consulted on large wayfinding projects, most recently in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the Olympics in 2016, the designer is Carlos Tiexiera, the Charles L. Owen Professor in Design at the Institute of Design, and we were extremely fortunate to have a chance to sit down with him as part of our research for this episode. And one of the interesting perspectives here is number one, like any large scale problem, this is definitely a systems thinking problem. And we asked Carlos to define systems thinking in his own terms, and here’s what he had to say.

 

Carlos Tiexiera:

The most fundamental concept for understanding systems thinking is the notion that it’s a collection of agents that have agency over each other. If you understand this basic concept, you start to apply to everything around you and understand that everything has an agency in the world: an idea, a concept, a currency, a product, a service.

 

Albert Shum:

I think in addition to system thinking, it’s important to understand path dependency, grids and geographic references in wayfinding. And I think Carlos had some great insights on what it takes to create a map that works. And here’s his thoughts.

 

Carlos Tiexiera:

One of the biggest challenges that any map faces when designing is to understand the concept of path dependency, the notion that new solutions are built on past standards. So when you’re designing the map, what are the core essence that cannot be thrown away, because it’s how people have already conceptualized the space in the navigation of the space. I’m not eliminating all the big challenges of a New York system map, because it’s unique in the world in terms of all the changes, all the maintenance, all the diversity of people that use the system, the scale of the city. So all those things make doing a map for New York City almost impossible, but if you can anchor on existing mental models, you can reduce by a significant amount of effort what it takes for people to understand how to read information and how to make a decision.

 

Thamer Abanami:

There’s also the basic importance of aligning map design with users’ mental models with regard to geographic landmarks. Here’s Carlos again.

 

Carlos Tiexiera:

People discuss a lot the difference between the Vignelli map trying to impose geometry over the geography, but very little association is done to the fact that the geography of New York City is a geometry. This is the work from John Randel, where he created the street grid, and this was established in 1811, and Randel’s grid didn’t have 45 degrees. So in New York City, there is no diagonals. So you will think vertical, but you think in 90 degrees, and Vignelli was introducing 45 degrees, similar to London. So, maybe the 45 degrees is more appropriate for the London map, because the London City accommodates geography that has 45 degrees. New York City doesn’t have that; it’s based on a rectangle. The reason why it doesn’t have 45 degrees, and it doesn’t accommodate 45 degrees because it’s a rectangle that is a different grid that doesn’t allow you to have a perfect square with diagonals where you can scale up and down the same grid. So I’m not trying to create a new theory, but I was puzzled that from a conceptual point of view, I didn’t find anyone linking Vignelli’s map to Randel’s grid.

 

Albert Shum:

And with that, I think the role of research is so important in testing and having that feedback loop. I think Carlos had some great thoughts on why user research is really needed to create a map that works for everyone.

 

Carlos Tiexiera:

So it’s not only thinking, “How do I go from point A to point B?”, but what are all the junctions where those users will be confronting the challenge of saying, “Do I go right? Do I go left? Do I go to  platform A or Platform B?” So all those touch points where there was a need for understanding what is the question that is going on in the mind of the user, and what is the information that is needed at this point and accommodating for the different diversity, what we needed to do is to look for the very different users and how they navigate those different points. So it’s not just that the point is designed for standard information. Depending on if I’m going as a tourist, I would like to have certain kinds of information. For example, I might want to leave the station and go walking. So what is the walking distance from here, if I’m someone that is going to a doctor’s appointment and I’m going to from there, take a Uber or take a bus, what is the exit for me to get the connection so understanding the different touch points, as I said, of the system, and where the different users come together, and what is the information that everybody needs, but each one needs in a different way for a different purpose.

 

Albert Shum:

In addition to a lot of the great insight Carlos had, he also shared with us this idea that it’s really important to consider your client’s ability to implement your design. And I think the MTA definitely had a lot of constraints in terms of being able to implement all Massimo Vignelli’s design intent.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Yeah, especially the fact that he had four maps proposed originally and they didn’t all get implemented. And that leads us to this kind of other concept of iterative success, initial failure doesn’t necessarily negate the viability of a concept. And the return of Vignelli’s design in the Weekender map and in digital versions of the map showed, I think, that maybe Vignelli might have been ahead of his time, or ahead of his ability to have the bright tools to manifest these designs and that is something Carlos turned us on to as well. Let’s hear that from him.

 

Carlos Tiexiera:

When you are introducing an entire new structure, people have to recalibrate the amount of effort that they have to put in to navigate the information. When you have three different maps that are telling you how to navigate the system, even having to move from one map to the other. So I think that anyone designing the map would have to be able to integrate a lot of this information in a user-friendly way. And the good news is that today, you have technology that allows you to do that. So I would say Vignelli was ahead of his time when he designed it, an information system, and he didn’t have the technology to implement that paper maps could not do what he intended to do. So in many ways, he was someone trying to change the system of the past, but the technology that he had was not sufficient for that, and he created an information system ahead of his time that with the technology that we have today, we could go and implement that.

 

Thamer Abanami:

After kind of getting some points of perspective from our conversation with Carlos, let’s wrap it up. I think we both have a lot of personal stories that relate to this work, and there’s this concept, Albert, that you have used in the past, of the designer as an urban planner, can you kind of expand on that? Because I think it relates heavily to what we’ve been discussing.

 

Albert Shum:

Well, I think I’ve been fortunate to work on projects at the scale where, similar to New York City subway map, where you have millions of users, but also multiple stakeholders, and a rich ecosystem. Plus, similar to the New York City Subway, there’s a lot of legacy existing systems. So as a designer, you have to shift your approach. You cannot just think of like, “Hey, I’m going to create a bit of design, and that will solve all the problems.” You have to think of it more of as a system problem. And I think that’s where my analogy of being more like an urban planner, is that you have to consider all the different stakeholders in the system. Think of cultivating an ecosystem, just like you would like a city where each neighborhood has different needs, has its own context, has its own richness, and you’re trying to create a way for people to navigate across that system. I think the other part of an urban planner is back to that legacy. You can’t change everything overnight. You can’t just pave over neighborhoods, or maybe you can, and then put in a new road, but that’d be really disruptive. So how do you accommodate change? Is something that I think a lot about, similar to urban planners, that you have to enroll the stakeholders. You have to bring your customers along. You cannot just drop a design or drop a change on your existing customers and expect them to say, oh, okay, no problem. I’ll just start using it. I think probably when Massimo Vignelli was working on it, he didn’t have the same facilities to actually help him navigate through that change, whereas today, I think we have so many more tools in our toolbox to be able to act more like an urban planner, to be more considerate of context, of community, but also of your stakeholders. So that’s my thinking around being more like an urban planner as a designer.

 

Thamer Abanami:

In addition to this idea of designer as urban planner, Albert, in some of our work, I’ve heard you speak of this tension between “designer centered” versus “system centered” versus “user centered.” Can you kind of expand on that and relate it to what we discussed?

 

Albert Shum:

Yeah, I think that’s a framing I use, not to compare and contrast, but to say, like there’s different approaches, that it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about using the right approach at the right time. And there are times where you need to be designer centered. And that sounds very kind of like a controversial statement.  We should not put ourselves at the center. No, when you’re trying to create change, you do need to express an intent, but also a vision where you want to go. You know, it’s that famous Steve Jobs quote like, “Hey, customers might not know what they want.” I think that’s when taken the wrong way, that sounds very egotistical, but if you think about, if you’re trying to think about the future and where you want to create, especially in new spaces and new categories and new products, I think you do have to create a design-centered approach and Massimo Vignelli was a designer who felt like, “Hey, it’s time for a modernist approach, a modern design system to New York City subway map.” So, he put it out there and said, “Hey, this is the right thing for the time.” So that’s the design approach, whereas I think when you’re working at scale, I think a system-centered approach, that’s why you create a design system is how do you create things that allows others to create with it. I think that’s when a system approach is really important, and that’s where you have to consider multiple stakeholders, where stakeholders between business or technology or even different sets of customers. You have to navigate that tension. So that’s the system center approach. And the third one, I think user centered, the ones that we’re often familiar with. What is that user journey? How do you help an individual or group of people navigate or find the things they need to do, the things they need to do? I think that’s a user-centered approach. So all three are required as you kind of work through your design set, and knowing when to use which approach is the most important part of being a designer.

 

Thamer Abanami:

That’s really poignant, Albert, and you know, as we wrap up our discussion on the Vignelli subway map, I think it’s crucial to reflect on the role of failure in design and innovation. You can have a beautiful design, have great design execution, but it can also fail. And just because it failed doesn’t mean it’s a failure. Sometimes failing is what is needed to succeed–and that’s okay.

 

Albert Shum:

Design’s iterative. It’s that, as we were talking about this learning mindset, you don’t learn by always being successful. You learn by sometimes failing and I think from the Vignelli map to the Hertz map, the thing that really inspired me with the Hertz map was taking all the learnings from what worked and what didn’t work on the Vignelli map and building on it. And to me, that’s good design. Good design is not saying, like, “Hey, I got it done, and my first design is the best.” It’s actually that you can learn and build on that work and take it even further. I think that’s the cycle, and that’s the approach that I appreciate about design, especially today, where we have so many more tools at our disposal, and that we do have ability to create both qualitative and quantitative research to help us improve and understand what is better for customers, but also for all the stakeholders. So with that, I felt like the Massimo Vignelli New York City subway map story has so many lessons, so many, such a richness, that often we don’t get the chance to explore. And I really appreciate the listeners making time with us today to dive into the story.

 

Thamer Abanami:

Thank you, Albert, and that’s a wrap for today’s episode of With Intent. We hope this deep dive into the 1972 New York City subway map by Massimo Vignelli gave you new insights about design and systems thinking applied to large problems. We want to give a big thanks to the faculty and staff at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech, as well as Carlos Teixeira for helping us demystify this puzzle of how a beautiful tour de force, successful work in the world of graphic design can also be a failure in its intended purpose of helping people find their way.

 

With Intent is a production of the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech, and is part of its Latham Fellows Program. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you next time.