History and Design of Transit Maps

I have been researching the history and design of the New York City subway maps for a number of years. In 2012 I published the book Vignelli: Transit Maps based on interviews with Massimo Vignelli, Joan Charysyn, and others, as well as archival research. I am preparing several further volumes documenting the hstory of the NYC subway map since its inception.

In 2017-2018 I was doing experimental research at the Universiy of Kent at Canterbury. See 'Effect of colour-coding on Usability' below.

History of the New York City subway map

Chapters, articles, and papers

• Genesis of the 1972 Vignelli subway map (20-page PDF)
  An excerpt from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, Make Straight the Way: Volume 5 of A History of the New York City Subway Map. It presents a detailed analysis of sketches made by Raleigh D'Adamo as the MTA's input to he design of the Vignelli map.
• Diagrammatic Maps of the New York Subway: an Historical Perspective (8-page PDF)
  Paper presented at the conference Diagrams 2018, Edinburgh, June 2018.
• From Modernism to Metro Maps: Mondrian, Beck, and Salomon (18-page epub)
  My article discussing the putative influence of Mondrian on subway maps, in Brief Encounters Vol.1, No. 1 (Feb 2017). DOI dx.doi.org/10.24134/be.v1i1.38.

Video presentations

• Why was the Vignelli Map Jettisoned by the MTA?
  presentation given in the Design Encounter series at the Vignelli Center for Design Studies. In this talk, I argue that the Vignelli map was jettisoned not because of a popular rejection by riders but because MTA Marketing wanted a map better suited to 'selling' the subway.

Book

• Vignelli: Transit Maps (RIT Press, 2012)
  This is the first book-length treatment of Massimo Vignelli's contribution to transit maps, focusing chiefly on his 1972 diagrammatic map of the New York City subway system, but also including his prototypes for the Washington Metro and his contribution to the Paris RER map.

Other

• An historical catalogue of maps of the New York City subway system
  A continuing sub-project to catalogue all published maps of the New York City subway system, focusing principally on the official maps issued by the MTA and its antecedent organisations (IRT, BMT, IND and before them the Rapid Transit Commission).
  

Design: Effect of colour-coding on usability

• Metro Map Colour-Coding: Effect on Usability in Route Tracing (16-page PDF) by Peter B. Lloyd (University of Kent), Peter Rodgers (University of Kent), Maxwell J Roberts (University of Essex). Presented at Diagrams 2018, Edinburgh, June 2018.
• Diagrammatic Metro Maps: Navigational Problems and their Detection and Remediation (3-page PDF) by Peter B. Lloyd. Presented in the Graduate Symposium at Diagrams 2018, Edinburgh, June 2018.

History & design: Symposium

An evening symposium that I organised on October 27, 2015. This was generously hosted by Cooper Union, who also recorded it on video. The event was timed to the 111th anniversary of the opening of the New York City subway on October 27, 1904, and looks at the recent past of the subway and its possible future. The following are video segments recorded by Cooper Union.

• Introduction
  David Greenstein introduces the evening on behalf of Cooper Union, and Peter B. Lloyd introduces some basic concepts of the mapping of the New York City subway.
• R. Raleigh D'Adamo: presentation
  R. Raleigh D'Adamo on how he created his 1964 map, which introduced color-coding to the New York City subway map.
• Peter B. Lloyd: Presentation
  Peter B. Lloyd on the development of the New York City subway map after Raleigh D'Adamo's introduction of color coding in 1964.
• John Tauranac: presentation
  John Tauranac (Chair of the 1970s Subway Map Committee) on how to fix the subway map.
• Eddie Jabbour: Intro and Presentation
  Eddie Jabbour presents the KickMap family of subway maps.
• Joe Brennan: Intro and Presentation
  Joseph Brennan presents on the subway map.
• Sarah Kaufman: Intro and Presentation
  Sarah Kaufman: Blue Dots.
• Neysa Pranger: Intro and Presentation
  Neysa Pranger: The Future of the Subway Map
• Panel: Q&A: Intro and Discussion
  Q&A with full panel: (left to right) Eddied Jabbour, John Tauranac, Raleigh D'Adamo, Naysa Pranger, Sarah Kaufman, Joe Brennan.

Blog & social media

• NYCSubwayMap.org
  A continuing blog on aspects of the historical development of the New York Ciy subway map.
  
• Facebook @NYCSubwayMap
• Twitter @TheNYCSubwayMap
• Instagram @NYCSubwayMap

Software and data

• Files for colour-coding usability study

Back