The greatest achievement of the designer Massimo Vignelli, who has died aged 83, was to give America a modern look. With its citrus fruit-salad of colour and its bold typography, Vignelli's work on the New York subway system redefined Manhattan in the 1970s. When the city was at its lowest ebb, threatened by bankruptcy and violent crime, the maps and the signage he designed for the decrepit network were an optimistic statement in the midst of all the decay, a glimpse of better times to come.
The subway map that Vignelli and his collaborators produced in 1972 was actually a diagram the most striking piece of public signage since Harry Beck had designed the London Underground map in 1933. The contrast between Beck, with his engineering background, earnest-looking in spectacles, and the suave Italian Vignelli, in a collarless jacket, could not have been greater. London's map looked like a brilliant translation of a circuit board; New York's was a flamboyant work of art. But Beck's diagram is still in use, whereas Vignelli's disappeared after a few years.
Continue reading...