still not vignelli
The MTA is releasing a new New York City Subway map.
Next month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will unveil a resized, recolored and simplified edition of the well-known map, its first overhaul in more than a decade.
Manhattan will become taller, bulkier and 30 percent wider, to better display its spaghetti of subway lines. Staten Island, meanwhile, will shrink by half. The spreadsheetlike “service guide,” along the map’s bottom border, will be eliminated, and the other three boroughs will grow to fill the space.
A separate, stripped-down map will also be produced, to be displayed only inside subway cars. Neighborhood names, parks, ferries and bus connections will not appear on this version, making for a less cluttered composition that may be easier to read over a fellow rider’s shoulders.
If you want simplicity, maybe it’s about time we moved back to designer Massimo Vignelli’s classic 1972 map. Yes, tourists had problems with its abstract geography, but isn’t culling the tourist herds something we can all get behind?