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New York. The subway map illustrated by Ponzi

The map of the New York City subway system was designed in 1972 by Massimo Vignelli. In a book illustrated for the MoMA, Emiliano Ponzi tells the genesis.

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The New York City subway is one of the largest mass-transit systems in the world, with 24 lines and 472 stations serving nearly 6 million riders every day. This vast and complex system needs very clear maps and signs for its many riders, and when in 1972 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority decided that it was time for a new map, it called on Massimo Vignelli, an Italian designer living in New York, to create it.

Img01. Massimo’s name comes from the Latin name Maximus, which means “the greatest.”
He was born in Milan, a city in Italy. As a boy, he used to travel through the city with his eyes toward the sky, looking at the forms and shapes made by the outlines of buildings. In 1965 he moved to New York City.
He started a design company there with ve friends
Img02. One day a call came from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: “We’d like you to come up with a new design for New York’s subway map.” This would be the most dif cult project the designers had ever done
Img03. Massimo decided to start from the beginning:
Why did people take the subway? To get where they needed to go? With his team, he studied the people who came and went. They walked around station after station and took the trains uptown, downtown, and crosstown. They observed faces, hats, kids wearing funky clothes, garbage, newspapers, advertisements. Folks walking, standing, reading, waiting, rushing, idling, yelling, shoving, sleeping
Img04. All that information buzzed around in Massimo’s head. Colors, shapes, movement... He tried to see it all from a new perspective
Img05. The subway lines were like snakes that
had to be tamed inside the rectangle of a map. So much information, so little space...

Vignelli and his team wrestle with the difficulties of depicting the subway system and of turning a lot of information into an easy-to-use map: what to include, what to leave out, and how to show it. Their struggles and results introduce young readers to the idea of graphic design as a way to solve problems, to communicate effectively and elegantly, and to create objects that shape our world.



The Great New York Subway Map, created by the award-winning author and illustrator Emiliano Ponzi and published in partnership with the New York Transit Museum, includes images of the original map, now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, alongside other examples of Vignelli’s work

  • The Great New York Subway Map
  • Emiliano Ponzi
  • 298 x 230 mm
  • Hardcover
  • January 2018
  • Museum of Modern Art
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