There are a few truths New Yorkers hold to be self-evident. 1. You can’t get a taxi in the rain. 2. Anything can be delivered at anytime, to anywhere. 3. The official font of the MTA is Helvetica.
Okay, so maybe the last one is less self-evident. Still, typography lovers and design aficionados know that Helvetica, the font that changed the world and warranted its own April Fools gag, also changed the New York City transit system. The pleasant (if boring) sans serif font adorns our trains, our signs, and our maps, and has done so since the late sixties, to everyone’s delight, right?
Well, not exactly.
In the ambitious and highly readable “Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: the True (Maybe) Story,” Paul Shaw explains in great detail how Helvetica didn’t quite take the city by storm. There are today visible clues that other fonts were contenders (like the font on the intricate tile work that adorns most subway stations), but the full story lies in the history of the unification of three subway lines—the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit), the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit), and the IND (Independent)—and the evolution of the NYCTA (New York City Transit Authority) into the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority, which incorporated the Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth commuter rail).
Despite numerous attempts at style standardization, the merging and growth of these various agencies proved an administrative nightmare. Though Helvetica was always the choice font for typographic synchronization, it was simply too expensive to ship over from Amsterdam, where it was made (back in the days of metal type, lead font plates had to be imported, a costly endeavor, since the plates had to be custom manufactured to fit American printing presses). In the early sixties (much like today) New York City Transit just didn’t have the money. Instead, the MTA used a similar font called Standard, or Akzidenz-Grotesk, which took nineteen years to fully phase out. It wasn’t until 1989 that the MTA officially ratified the decision to replace it with Helvetica in its “Sign Manual.”
Below are photos from Shaw’s book that offer glimpses into the past, present, and what might have been in our subway system (click to enlarge).
(All images courtesy Paul Shaw and “Helvetica and the New York City Subway System”)