The Mostly True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway

The Mostly True Story of Hel­vetica and the New York City Subway:

There is a com­monly held belief that Hel­vetica is the sig­nage type­face of the New York City subway system, a belief rein­forced by Hel­vetica, Gary Hustwit’s pop­u­lar 2007 doc­u­men­tary about the type­face. But it is not true—or rather, it is only some­what true. Hel­vetica is the offi­cial type­face of the MTA today, but it was not the type­face spec­i­fied by Uni­mark Inter­na­tional when it cre­ated a new sig­nage system at the end of the 1960s.

R-train icon, set in Helvetica and Standard.

I noticed this dis­crep­ancy ear­lier this year – I had to recre­ate some MTA subway icons for use on a project, and noticed that the R train map icon looked noth­ing like the Hel­vetica “R”. The MTA’s own web­site seems to be con­fused about the type used in the system icons, let alone its sta­tion signage.

Enter typog­ra­pher Paul Shaw, and his 10,000+ word piece on AIGA’s site. Did you now that Boston’s subway sig­nage system was the first to use Hel­vetica, with­out mod­i­fi­ca­tions? Ever curi­ous as to the process by which enamel signs are made? Want to just look at pretty pic­tures of subway signs over the years?

It’s a great his­tory, for fans of typog­ra­phy and the MTA.