Book Review: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story

Rugged types battle it out in the NYC transit ring*. Your commentator Paul Shaw describes the action

Non-creative folk might be perplexed to understand how a typeface could generate 132 fascinating pages but here they are and it's a riveting read. The chapter titled `Bringing order out of chaos' sets the scene with a brief description of the rather slapdash style of signage on the huge subway system over the decades. The next chapter looks at signage in Boston, England and Italy, mostly from the sixties onwards (so Harry Beck's map and Edward Johnston's typeface for the London Underground aren't included). The various transit systems had, by now, settled on a sans face loosely based on Standard Medium and in New York this eventually evolved into Helvetica over the years.

I always thought it odd that designers didn't take Standard Medium plus Bold or other sans (the Franklins, News Gothic, Venus et cetera) and just use them without modification. Letter and line spacing seems as important as the typeface in signage. The examples shown in the book have all been made into new faces. Maybe designers feel they must leave their individuality on these projects.

It wasn't until the mid-sixties that the transit people decided to get to grips with a unified type, graphics and signage system. Designer Massimo Vignelli and Unimark suggested ideas but amazingly, because of money problems, not too much came of the recommendations. It seems clear though that whatever outsiders suggested would have problems because of the way signs were produced. The Transit Authority had their own internal unit for making signs and the type stencils for some of these were actually cut by hand. Design manuals specifying all sorts of character and spacing refinements evaporated in reality.

Shaw devotes a chapter to the development of Helvetica and its ascendancy over all others (check out those horizontal terminals). The last three chapters reveal how it took nineteen years for the type get established as the sign typeface. Maybe all the work over the years to get it right sort of fades a bit with the expanding use of electronic information signs that use several types of letter generation.

The book was designed by the author (and Abby Goldstein) and it follows a rather unusual format. The text is in paragraph blocks, two to a page, with each ending with a footnote number. These are on the same page and set in five columns. The seventy-six footnotes are really the strength of the book because they carry a huge amount of detailed information. Throw into the mix 286 images and their captions and you get quite busy looking pages. Fortunately it all hangs together beautifully and it looks a handsome looking book (though I would have put .25 fine rules between the footnote columns). The back pages have a timeline, up to 2010, of the subway, a bibliography but oddly no index, I would have thought this was essential in this type of title.

I think Shaw is to be congratulated in writing a fascinating book about a specialist subject and making it come alive though it will probably be a bit too technical for a wider readership. Incidentally he has used a bit of personal whimsy on the book's front and back cover with the word Subway (see one of my uploads) and the type on the jacket is set in Standard Medium.

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Title spread.

Spot the difference, no prizes given though.

Fortunately none of this wonderful signage needs to be replaced by Helvetica.

MTA sign manual.

Milano type designed by Bob Noorda in 1964 and used on the small Milan subway.

From the chapter about the development of Helvetica. The illustrations are from Eduard Hoffman's scrapbook about the face. He was the boss of the Swiss Haas Typefounders.

Right: examples of electronic signage. Could this mark the end of Helvetica on the subway?

Left: top sign uses a handcut stencil with a Helvetica cap R and the rest in Standard Medium. How many folk spotted that mistake?

Some other Helvetica (and Standard Med) books and a Composing Room brochure, from the early sixties, about Akzidenz Grotesk.

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