As someone who was actively involved in transit authority signage during the switchover (I designed two editions of the MTA Graphic Standards Manual and served as the signage consultant to the TA Architecture Department during this time, I can tell you that half of what she says is untrue. Standard Medium as it appears in the Unimark GSM was never intended to be "typeset." Half of the manual is taken up with drawings of each letter in various sizes corresponding to the letter sizes for different sign types specified in the manual. These letterforms were traced or stenciled on full size drawings for sign manufacturers to replicate. Typesetting for publication was never included in the manual (except for a station finder table that was never used. This of course was extremely labor intensive and therefore expensive. As different forms of digital typography came into existence, they offered dramatic cost savings, but there was a problem. Standard Medium was obscure enough that it was not yet available in digital formats, while Helvetica in all its variants (same letterforms, different names to avoid copyright issues) was almost universally available. Thus, Helvetica became the official typeface almost by default. In fact, in one of the later GSMs I worked on, the typeface was officially switched to Helvetica Medium and Helvetica Medium Condensed was added because the original Unimark specifications simply did not work in practice in certain locations (like station names on steel girder columns),especially when the MTA adopted hyphenated station names instead of just the cross street. As to the "J," the "bullets" (circles and diamonds with letters or numbers used to designate the lines), these bullets were custom designed in conjunction the Michael Hertz Associates subway map that replaced the Unimark map. The bullets were based on the Standard Medium bullets designed by Unimark because the Transit Authority sign shop already had expensive stencils for the bullets. However, certain letters of the Standard Medium typeface did not read well in the small sizes needed for the map, so we made custom letterforms for each of these characters, which were in fact J, Q and R. Thus, the bullets to this day are a mix of Standard Medium and sort of Helvetica (from which we borrowed elements), even after the Transit Authority created its own digital font of the bullets which today is used for pretty much everything from maps and printed documents to all manner of signs.
Maybe it's because I grew up in NYC during the '70s and '80s, but I prefer the old Standard Medium typeface. To me, it has more character and uniqueness than boring overused Helvetica.
Not Gothic nor Times New Roman. It had to be a "sans serif", which translates as "without embellishments", and certainly, not a monotype font, but a proportional spaced font. Among the fonts that, within all above constraints (sans serifs and proportional) is the most legible at distance from a wide angle, Helvetica is the winner...
I very purposefully use Helvetica, but I sparingly use it as in its regular form. The form made popular in target branding, NYC subway, and others is Helvetica Bold or Black and it looks beautiful paired with a flat background
@@codycast They don't mention anywhere in the title that Helvetica is iconic for NYC. They wrote that Helvetica saved the NYC-Subway which is true due to no other typeface is easier to read.
@@derorje2035 That's putting a lot on typeface. Somehow people navigated the system for over a hundred years. There was rapid transit in Brooklyn and Manhattan for thirty years before the IRT ran its first train.
A standard signage system is more important than what font is used. As long as the font is clear enough it's good enough. You aim for a public transport system signage system is for users to quickly be able to differentiate between different types of signs, so you are totally right.
@@HyperVanilo They might not want it now, it was fine when this was being these issues were being fixed by the MTA. Keep in mind that the biggest reason that Comic Sans is hated is because of it's overuse. However it would have still worked perfectly fine, as codycast says, standardization of the signs was more important than the font used.
No. A simple font was needed that lacks the "feet" at the end of each stroke. A font without them is compact, so that more letters can fit within a limited horizontal amount of space. Wide stylized letters need wider signs, or lots of abbrev. or hard to understand sub'tion to fit long words or names into small signs.
True, further investment and improvements in the system following its nadir in the '70s and '80s were what really brought it back, but uniform signage surely helped in make it slightly more user-friendly. Especially in some of the more mazelike transfer stations like Times Square, where you can easily get lost without recognizable signs.
Exactly. It's a stupid title AND premise. I'll copy part of my comment here as well: It wasn't saved just by the typeface, Helvetica. It underwent a whole new design standard from iconography, colors, and spacing as well. The typeface was simply ONE PART of the new identity system. It's stupid and ill-researched to say that Helvetica alone is responsible for saving the day here. And I'm not even a top source on this, nor have I actively looked for this information. I've never lived in New York, I've never went to school for design, and I was never alive during any of these changes, but even I somehow know the entire design system was changed.
Lived here in NYC for 50 years and I can't imagine anyone from here watching this and not cringing. The video, not just the title, are superbly tone deaf.
@@DosAussieThai For printing, the type was produced by a “foundry“, which is a place where they cast metal into shapes. Cases of type (for uppercase and lower case) were literally wooden ‘cases’ filled with loose metal letters. A printer would have to buy actual physical cases of type, and have them shipped to him. Signwriting was generally done by hand in those days, but the sign writer would copy the printed version of the typeface. I was a sign writer from 1962 onwards, long before vinyl graphics and digital or even photo type.
@@novemberseventh1917 It's a joke about how widely used (and some graphic designers might say over-used) it is. There's nothing inherently bad about Helvetica, it's just the cult-like following it spawned and using it for everything that gets criticized.
@@KFCJones And quadraplegics managed to survive before wheelchairs too, but life was a lot harder. Just because people can manage under a terrible system is no argument for its perpetuation.
Attention to legibility really began in earnest with the Interstate highway system, when the federal government wanted a typeface that could be read from a distance at high speed under differing conditions (day, night, snow, fog, etc. They did extensive research on the subject, which was then picked up and expanded on by others. This spurred development of typefaces like the DIN families for road signs in Europe but has influenced almost all typography designed for signage of which there are now many excellent choices. If I were tasked by the MTA with finding a replacement for Helvética, the first thing I would look for is a typeface where the letterforms for "I" (upper case eye) "l" (lower case el) and "1"are all different and easily recognizable.
I guess this was intentional. I can only speak for London but there unique tiles were used too ease the journey for illiterates, giving every station a visiual identity.
Indeed, I briefly tried to figure out what year that map represents... but quickly decided it was nonsense. The first thing that jumped out was what seemed to be an intact USSR, so that imposes some initial constraints. Germany gobbled up Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and luxembourgh (although that last one is arguably too small to display). Yet Poland is still its own thing and it seems Austria and Chechoslovakia sit inside Poland!? Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia merged (instead of Yugoslavia being partitioned between Germany, Hungary and Italy from what I vaguely remember). Around that time I gave up on figuring out in what time period the map was set, just decided it was plain wrong. Probably could spot many more mistakes both inside Europe and elsewhere that never existed (or at least not at the same point in time).
I realize someone might have said it’s “professional” to have music playing in the background of videos but it’s terrible. Why do channels do this? You’re talking about subway history with loud random music playing in the background? What does that add?
@@christopherkotsopoulos701 cool. I do. And it’s annoying. Have you ever asked someone to explain something to you and they’re like “wait let me play music on the background over my talking” Why did this become a thing? And this dumb site doesn’t it worse than most
@@codycast Underscoring is usually done to establish a mood or theme, frequently used to recall and/or foreshadow a musical theme important to the character(s) and/or plot point.
@@redmed10 I guess if I don’t notice, they’re doing it right. But some of these TH-cam channels over do it. They think it makes their production more “professional” I guess
Apple’s default typeface is Helvetica and they recently recreated a typeface you can download called New York (it’s basically the helvetica version of times new Roman)
The New York City subway stopped progressing and expanding when the city took over the two privately owned subway companies. There used to be three: IND, IRT, and BMT. The IND was owned by the city and the BMT and IRT were privately owned.
took over the two *failing* privately owned subway companies Just in case anybody got the impression from your post that the reason why the system stopped expanding was the takeover, and that the expansion would have continued if left privatized.
I remember when I was a kid in the '60s in NYC how ancient the subways (signage looked) with serifed faces and generally always covered in a film of dust. When the new signage showed up it was a huge improvement and made it easier to do quick reads of the signs. Mind you, this period of time was dreadful for New York (as was all of the '70s) but this little bit of clarity and sophistication on the subways gave notice that the city may be down but it was certainly not out. I went to art school in the latter part of the '70s and the power of the signage became all the more clear. Helvetica is a strong no-nonsense font, perfect for this application.
0:08 There's 472 stations actually, you checked an old source (it used to be 468 for years, but recently the 7 line was extended to Hudson Yards with 1 more station and the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway was opened, with three more stations).
Some of the first underground stations built in London had different designs on the platforms so that those who were unable to read could tell if they were at the right stop (literacy levels were nowhere near as high as today). Maybe that's part of the reason why the early private companies in NY did the same thing?
Old street names, Straiton doesn't exist anymore. Probably went away in the 40s or 50s when they redid the stations from trolley to elevated to subway.
@@BallArtWolf_52 why's City Hall Station still a thing, or any of the other abandoned stations that still have Con Ed running power to them? Not for nothing, but I guess it is what it is buddy.
Helvetica or Standard Medium? No real difference. However, adding the colored route icons was the innovation that really helped navigation. They make it really easy to find your way through the most complicated stations all the way to where you can actually catch the train. That's my memory of NYC -- walking quickly through a busy unfamiliar stations to get to the correct platform.
Honestly this is where the London Underground shines above the NYC Subway. The Underground has an entirely custom font, as well as design language where you can feel the passion that went into it
I'm not a particular fan of Helvetica (though to some people it's as neutral as it gets, to me it's connected to the 1960s/70s and not the best in terms of legibility or versatility). But I can understand the motivation behind choosing such an overused typeface (or maybe when they initially decided for it, it wasn't overused ...) As mentioned in the video, one important reason is "availability across technologies". In lettering it's having adhesive letters in various sizes and colours available. You will find that you can get ready-made Helvetica letters in a lot of sizes. A custom typeface would require making these by order. Another reason, less important for MTA but more for internationally operating companies, would be that there are lots of foreign language versions of Helvetica. Greek? Russian? Vietnamese? All no problem, there's a Helvetica for it. That said, I enjoy the fact that different cities, companies, countries use their own typographic style. Especially if they are consistent about it. In a reply to another comment I mentioned Johnston which is used everywhere in London Transport and otherwise not so much. A typeface that makes up the character of a city because you won't find it in too many other places. In fact if you use Johnston anywhere in signage people will think of London. With Helvetica it's not the case. When you take it all together, the black backgrounds, the typical shape of arrows, the line designations in coloured circles and squares, it becomes typical for New York City. The same Helvetica in white on blue background is used for the wayfinding system of Swiss railways (particularly the state railway SBB CFF FFS, but numerous other operators use the same system). There again it's all the elements taken together that make up the look and feel of the system. Especially a specific set of pictograms. company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die-sbb/profil/sbb-markenportal.html (no English version online) As a designer of model railways, it's of course an advantage to have the right typeface readily available for all the inscriptions since 1981 (before that they used a so-called standard typeface which is clumsy and hard to get in digital form).
This is really no longer an issue. There are vinyl cutting machines that can take virtually any computer file (font, image) and produce a fully laid out cutout image ready to apply.
@@peterjoseph8881 If you take care of it. When it gets to exotic accented characters one can still see "replacement from whatever font has them because the typeface you chose for the text doesn't". And each time I wonder, don't they notice the mistake or do they just not care?
We are bombarded with signs! However, if we’re looking for a McDonalds or a Starbucks, we can find one because we train our minds to look for a certain icon. So, it makes sense for all subway signs to have a unique look. That helvitica type and the single letter inside a colored circle makes the station much easier to find.
Have you done a video as to why the city got rid of street signs that were color coded by borough-gold with black lettering for Manhattan and Staten Island, black with white lettering for Brooklyn, blue with white lettering for the Bronx, and white with blue lettering for Queens-and replaced them with green with white lettering for all five boroughs?
The resetting of the numbers (and really the Letters) of the trains along with the use of colored discs behind the train designations was likely more important than any typeface, IMHO.
Helvetica was the typeface I learned reading with. My first schoolbooks were set in Helvetica, and even before, my mother lettered the shelf compartments behind the desk of my parents with Helvetica.
As of 2017, the Subway has 472 Stations and 660 miles of track. I don't know where that 230 number is coming from. It hasn't had that little trackage in over a century.
I love Helvetica and choose that whenever available in software. If not, I go with Arial. In the 1980s, dot-matrix printers always printed text the same. When software got more sophisticated they started to use Times New Roman to show off the details that could be rendered using bitmaps instead of just sending ASCII text to the printer. I've hated for many years that many word processors still default to Times New Roman. I love Helvetica. (And I think Christine Beldon is totally hot!) Keep up the great videos, Cheddar!!!
The original graphic standards manual thought of everything, and the sign designs were quite elegant. Early on, though, there was a major change to the new sign design from a white background to a black background because it was said to be more readable. In a classic design-by-committee move, the black cap at the top of the signs remained and they added a thin white stripe above the wording to visually separate the sign from the cap.
They didn't really think of everything. There were quite a few deficiencies. The two biggest mistakes were using black lettering on a white field (harder to read than white on black and began to look shabby very quickly because of rail dust), and fixed-size modules which are not the most efficient use of space when retrofitting old stations.
helvetica is a safe font when you’re stuck with typeface. heavy & bold are great for informative headline while light & ultra thin are excellent for paragraphs, problem being, it can be quickly dated.
Sure, the typeface can provide with a clear visual signal but the message itself and placement of info if of great importance too. I visited NY in November (I’m Swedish) and saw a few posters with complicated descriptions about disruptions in traffic. Yes, the subway system is complicated but that just felt like all Greek to me. I just moved on and hoped I wouldn’t be affected. A clear message is of great importance for any traveller.
The host did a great job explaining this. She’s great at her job and I don’t want to take away from her by saying: I fucking love her hair. I want to try her style. It’s flattering for sure.
The MBTA in Boston also uses Helvetica on its signs. Better yet, it color-codes the station name sign so you know what line you're on (Red, Green, Orange, Blue and Silver Lines plus Commuter Rail). New York City's MTA should try the same thing
The New York City subway is a large cluster of lines served by various trains. There is more than one line that can be found on a single route. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority lines are on a much smaller scale. The New York City subway system is large and has approximately 27subway lines. In 1969, each subway line had its own color while under the three transit divisions: The IRT, the BMT, and the IND. Years later, the subway routes were designated single colors, representing the lines that are in Manhattan, except the G line, which is in yellow-green and runs through Brooklyn and Queens. The 7 Avenue line of the 1, 2 and 3 trains is red; the Lexington Avenue line of the 4, 5 and 6 trains is green, the Broadway line of the N, Q, R and W trains is yellow, the 6 Avenue line of the B, D, F and M trains is orange, etcetera. This change reduced a lot of confusion that was on the old subway maps.
@@captainkeyboard1007 I've said a few times in other transit-related videos and forums, in a sense NYC's subway is more similar to the Paris Metro than, say, the London Underground, in that Paris also marks their trains by numbers (similar to a bus or streetcar system) instead of colored lines like in Boston and London (the lines in London are marked by name instead of color, but they're still color-coded on the map).
@@andyjay729Include the Washington Metrorail system. It uses the Helvetica font. This printer font resembles closely to Neue Haas Grotesk found in Microsoft Windows 10. Thank you for tapping or typing to me.
2:20 "In 1940, the subway lines were running out of money, so the city merged all 3 lines together." They were running out of money because the city prevented them from raising their fares (which were then $0.05). The city claimed it could do it cheaper . . . then raised the ticket price by $0.05 every few years from 1948 to 1972, finally hitting $0.35, and now nearly $3 today.
Many of the subway cars have Standard Medium print on their number plates. The latest cars R-142, R-142A, R-160, R-160A, R-160B, and the R-179 have Helvetica print on their number plates. I like both, the Helvetica and Standard Medium fonts. The Helvetica font should be the standard lettering on all rapid transit signs. Incidentally, there are 472 train stations.
Sometimes Cheddar really confuses me; there is a world outside of NYC. The NYC videos tend to mostly ignore this. Like for this video, NYC Subways started to use Helvetica because... it was incredibly popular and common. So we aren’t actually getting the story for how Helvetica became so popular, which wasn’t related to NYC and isn’t covered in this video, yet is the answer to the key question posed.
Helvetica was designed to be the most neutral medium. It won't make plain design become fancy. Consistency, wording and color are the key. And what about icons
I like it just the way it is now, with originals on every subway station, distinguishing one from the other. Next step, lower the fares and improve the commute.
If it wasn't for the private companies, nyc would have still gotten a subway system except it would probably been built cohesively with the rest of the state in mind
I thought they took a page from Apple but apparently, Apple started using Helvetica in OS X ans iOS in like the mid to late 2000's. Nowadays, they use a related typeface called San Francisco.
Consistent design matters far more than typeface, regardless of what "designers" tell people.Yes, the typeface needs to match the use (i.e. don't use Comic Sans for a CV), but other than that, most normal people can't tell typefaces in the same family apart. Arial vs. Helvetica vs. Roboto etc.pp... matters only to specialists. For everyone else, it matters exactly zilch as long as it's readable and the signage is consistent.
Those days: Typefaces had to be shipped from abroad to produce Helvetica at a printing press. These days: Any kid with a keyboard can produce Helvetica instantly at home.
I don’t see anything wrong with the variations in the mosaic signs on the different stations. I kinda prefer each station to have it’s own look. It makes it easier to remember and keep track of different stops. It’s plain boring if everything is the same. Stations is Stockholm all have themes (coloured walls, artworks, statues, etc) and it provides something more for the visitors/travellers than just a space to pass through. Our subways are not as old as New York’s of course, so I get that ideas of these spaces differ in different periods of time.
I am old enough to (barely) recall the OLD look of the Subway. Wicker seats (plastic) and CLEAN! This while folks could openly smoke cigs. It was nice.
nice video~when I first went to new york, what suprised me is overwheliming amounts of typeface signs… which like shock wave into my brain.Anyway,now I can look into the book mentioned in video to learn more…
The world should make an agreement to make Helvetica the unified universal font for all railways and airports and public transits. It will be amazing. Also please ban Comic Sans while at it.
This is not just a New York City problem, either. Now imagine dealing with Tokyo's spaghetti-maze transit systems with JR East lines, private railway lines and two different subway systems. Getting everyone to agree on readable Japanese/English bilingual signs was one thing, but then they started station numbering several years ago....
The numbers are actually a good innovation IMHO, especially for visitors to Japan who can't read hiragana/katakana or the Latin alphabet or are still learning them.
A pigeon inside of a subway car?! New York is nuts. I lived in Mexico City for fifteen years -- ain´t got nothin' on New York. Never ever saw a bird on the subway.
T O N E D E A F Yeah, unifying the subway by selling them all to the city saved the subway system by making the signs legible. Ask anyone who loves in New York and we'll tell you its been wonderful, everything is up to....wait, Target existed in the 1960s?
As someone who was actively involved in transit authority signage during the switchover (I designed two editions of the MTA Graphic Standards Manual and served as the signage consultant to the TA Architecture Department during this time, I can tell you that half of what she says is untrue. Standard Medium as it appears in the Unimark GSM was never intended to be "typeset." Half of the manual is taken up with drawings of each letter in various sizes corresponding to the letter sizes for different sign types specified in the manual. These letterforms were traced or stenciled on full size drawings for sign manufacturers to replicate. Typesetting for publication was never included in the manual (except for a station finder table that was never used. This of course was extremely labor intensive and therefore expensive. As different forms of digital typography came into existence, they offered dramatic cost savings, but there was a problem. Standard Medium was obscure enough that it was not yet available in digital formats, while Helvetica in all its variants (same letterforms, different names to avoid copyright issues) was almost universally available. Thus, Helvetica became the official typeface almost by default. In fact, in one of the later GSMs I worked on, the typeface was officially switched to Helvetica Medium and Helvetica Medium Condensed was added because the original Unimark specifications simply did not work in practice in certain locations (like station names on steel girder columns),especially when the MTA adopted hyphenated station names instead of just the cross street.
As to the "J," the "bullets" (circles and diamonds with letters or numbers used to designate the lines), these bullets were custom designed in conjunction the Michael Hertz Associates subway map that replaced the Unimark map. The bullets were based on the Standard Medium bullets designed by Unimark because the Transit Authority sign shop already had expensive stencils for the bullets. However, certain letters of the Standard Medium typeface did not read well in the small sizes needed for the map, so we made custom letterforms for each of these characters, which were in fact J, Q and R. Thus, the bullets to this day are a mix of Standard Medium and sort of Helvetica (from which we borrowed elements), even after the Transit Authority created its own digital font of the bullets which today is used for pretty much everything from maps and printed documents to all manner of signs.
This may mark me forever as a geek or nerd but I found your comment extremely interesting. Thanks for posting it.
@@BobPagani, wear the mark proudly! Thanks.
Maybe it's because I grew up in NYC during the '70s and '80s, but I prefer the old Standard Medium typeface. To me, it has more character and uniqueness than boring overused Helvetica.
Oh, and isn't Standard basically the same as Akzidenz-Grotesk?
Thank you for this, super interesting!
Imagine if they decided to go with Comic Sans instead of Helvetica.
The funniest of all fonts.
How about: no.
Maybe comic sans would be more accepted
Algerian
Not Gothic nor Times New Roman.
It had to be a "sans serif", which translates as "without embellishments", and certainly, not a monotype font, but a proportional spaced font.
Among the fonts that, within all above constraints (sans serifs and proportional) is the most legible at distance from a wide angle, Helvetica is the winner...
Helvetica is basically the typeface you use when you don't know which typeface to use
Nope
yep, because of Vignelli
I thought it was Arial
@@TEDdotcom No, it's actually Calibri. The font no one bothers to change from when using any MS Office app. Fuck Calibri!
I very purposefully use Helvetica, but I sparingly use it as in its regular form. The form made popular in target branding, NYC subway, and others is Helvetica Bold or Black and it looks beautiful paired with a flat background
The font isnt "iconic" for NYC its literally WVERYWHERE
But that doesn’t make good clickbait for this cheesy (pun intended) channel
@@codycast They don't mention anywhere in the title that Helvetica is iconic for NYC. They wrote that Helvetica saved the NYC-Subway which is true due to no other typeface is easier to read.
@@derorje2035 That's putting a lot on typeface. Somehow people navigated the system for over a hundred years. There was rapid transit in Brooklyn and Manhattan for thirty years before the IRT ran its first train.
The old typefaces were non uniform but some were classy. Some, not so much.
It's iconography often recognized from New York subways. It's iconic for sure.
I honestly had no idea that Helvetica was synonymous with NYC.
So I really doubt that that connection is there lol
Agreed
It's probably one of the most common fonts in the world. It was on the Space Shuttle.
Well, since New York is in Switzerland, it makes prefect sense. 😉
I guess they meant "Nowadays you cannot imagine the NYC subway without the Helvetica font"
I live in Asia. Whenever I fly into San Francisco, Helvetica is the font I instantly notice everywhere and reminds me that I'm in America.
Not sure why you’d conclude “Helvetica” saved anything. Seems what helped was standardized signs... could have been any font
I dont think people want Comic Sans in important place like subway.
A standard signage system is more important than what font is used. As long as the font is clear enough it's good enough. You aim for a public transport system signage system is for users to quickly be able to differentiate between different types of signs, so you are totally right.
@@HyperVanilo They might not want it now, it was fine when this was being these issues were being fixed by the MTA. Keep in mind that the biggest reason that Comic Sans is hated is because of it's overuse. However it would have still worked perfectly fine, as codycast says, standardization of the signs was more important than the font used.
They weren't saying it couldn't have been, but it wasn't, it was Helvetica.
No. A simple font was needed that lacks the "feet" at the end of each stroke. A font without them is compact, so that more letters can fit within a limited horizontal amount of space. Wide stylized letters need wider signs, or lots of abbrev. or hard to understand sub'tion to fit long words or names into small signs.
There is no correlation whatsoever that this font SAVED the NYC subway. Pretty sure the NYC subway saved the NYC subway
Click bait. Oh well. It was interesting.
"How NYC subway saved NYC subway by utilizing Helvetica" would be an awful long title. I like it better the way it is.
Or not. NYC subway is still shitty lol
Finally someone gets it….
True, further investment and improvements in the system following its nadir in the '70s and '80s were what really brought it back, but uniform signage surely helped in make it slightly more user-friendly. Especially in some of the more mazelike transfer stations like Times Square, where you can easily get lost without recognizable signs.
Stop those sensationalist titles. "Saved", omg
Exactly. It's a stupid title AND premise. I'll copy part of my comment here as well:
It wasn't saved just by the typeface, Helvetica. It underwent a whole new design standard from iconography, colors, and spacing as well. The typeface was simply ONE PART of the new identity system. It's stupid and ill-researched to say that Helvetica alone is responsible for saving the day here. And I'm not even a top source on this, nor have I actively looked for this information. I've never lived in New York, I've never went to school for design, and I was never alive during any of these changes, but even I somehow know the entire design system was changed.
It also doesn't really have anything to do with New York specifically. Its a similar story in other places all over the world.
Lived here in NYC for 50 years and I can't imagine anyone from here watching this and not cringing. The video, not just the title, are superbly tone deaf.
It’s a title that describes the topic of the video in an intriguing way. There’s no lie. I see no problem with using intriguing titles like this.
"It's become synonymous with everything New York City."
Perhaps except the most iconic NY print of all time, I♥️NY, which uses American Typewriter.
Damn, they used to have to physically ship typefaces? What a pain in the ass. Just another modern convenience that we never give a second thought to.
"physically ship typefaces?" What does it mean? What did they have to do?
@@DosAussieThai Watch the video. They literally explain it.
@@DosAussieThai For printing, the type was produced by a “foundry“, which is a place where they cast metal into shapes. Cases of type (for uppercase and lower case) were literally wooden ‘cases’ filled with loose metal letters. A printer would have to buy actual physical cases of type, and have them shipped to him. Signwriting was generally done by hand in those days, but the sign writer would copy the printed version of the typeface. I was a sign writer from 1962 onwards, long before vinyl graphics and digital or even photo type.
@@izziebon Thank you very much.
@@nortex010 I have, but still didn't understand.
Brought back memories of my subway riding days in the 70'S. I remember some trains having straw seats in particular the 'A' line.
SIRT Also had the rattan / straw seats, which as I recall could be swung to face forward or back
Still have memories of being impaled when sitting on jagged worn straw seats and chewed Chiclets gum remains underneath them.
Seeing this comment while riding the A train lol
The CTA in Chicago uses Helvetica as well. Even the agency's logo is in that same font face. They also went through similar phases like New York did.
Luckily, Helvetica is a very, very rare occurrence.
why is it so bad?
@@novemberseventh1917 It's a joke about how widely used (and some graphic designers might say over-used) it is. There's nothing inherently bad about Helvetica, it's just the cult-like following it spawned and using it for everything that gets criticized.
Oh boy time to go back down that series rabbit hole 😂
It’s a reference to a TV show called Look Around You.
@@fightfairfightfair exactly ... Calcium. Look up the Helvetica Scenario. "Danger, Helvetica!"
It amazes me that legibility and usability was not even a concern until relatively recently.
I get it but at the same time, people navigated the subway for decades before and during the standardization of signage.
@@KFCJones And quadraplegics managed to survive before wheelchairs too, but life was a lot harder. Just because people can manage under a terrible system is no argument for its perpetuation.
probably because there was no unification. 3 separate companies who all used the same system until the MTA
Attention to legibility really began in earnest with the Interstate highway system, when the federal government wanted a typeface that could be read from a distance at high speed under differing conditions (day, night, snow, fog, etc. They did extensive research on the subject, which was then picked up and expanded on by others. This spurred development of typefaces like the DIN families for road signs in Europe but has influenced almost all typography designed for signage of which there are now many excellent choices. If I were tasked by the MTA with finding a replacement for Helvética, the first thing I would look for is a typeface where the letterforms for "I" (upper case eye) "l" (lower case el) and "1"are all different and easily recognizable.
@@mapeter2 Interesting stuff.
"all different and easily recognizable." I agree. So which font would that be?
1:47 Kinda cool how they gave each station a unique look
I
guess this was intentional.
I can only speak for London but there unique tiles were used too ease the journey for illiterates, giving every station a visiual identity.
Well Japan got a jingle for each station
In Mexico City we have a whole pictogram for every single station.
Chicago has it too.
@@KTJohnsonkidThunder But Chicago is only a letter, in Mexico City we have a whole drawing representing a place nearby or the name of the station 😉
They just gave up at making the map at 4:59
Wdym?
All the countries are messed up
@@Penguinmanereikel If you have ever looked at a world map, then you will understand that there's... way too many mistakes in the map they present
Good eye!
Indeed, I briefly tried to figure out what year that map represents... but quickly decided it was nonsense.
The first thing that jumped out was what seemed to be an intact USSR, so that imposes some initial constraints. Germany gobbled up Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and luxembourgh (although that last one is arguably too small to display). Yet Poland is still its own thing and it seems Austria and Chechoslovakia sit inside Poland!? Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia merged (instead of Yugoslavia being partitioned between Germany, Hungary and Italy from what I vaguely remember).
Around that time I gave up on figuring out in what time period the map was set, just decided it was plain wrong. Probably could spot many more mistakes both inside Europe and elsewhere that never existed (or at least not at the same point in time).
I realize someone might have said it’s “professional” to have music playing in the background of videos but it’s terrible.
Why do channels do this? You’re talking about subway history with loud random music playing in the background? What does that add?
I don't find it loud at all.
@@christopherkotsopoulos701 cool. I do. And it’s annoying. Have you ever asked someone to explain something to you and they’re like “wait let me play music on the background over my talking”
Why did this become a thing? And this dumb site doesn’t it worse than most
@@codycast Underscoring is usually done to establish a mood or theme, frequently used to recall and/or foreshadow a musical theme important to the character(s) and/or plot point.
News programmes sometimes put in music for no reason too.
@@redmed10 I guess if I don’t notice, they’re doing it right. But some of these TH-cam channels over do it. They think it makes their production more “professional” I guess
5:38 "When letter 'J' appears in discs or diamonds..." What does that mean?
Ah nevermind, it's the line icons (for anyone wondering). But then that doesn't explain why Helvetica 'J' was used at 5:28
@@nortex010 That's the name of a stop, and stop name signs use Helvetica too.
@@Slickmickyoyo97 But why only the J? The design manual said that rule only applied to discs and diamonds
Circle = local train, Diamond = express train
@@Slickmickyoyo97 but that's not the name of a stop. I think the sign is fake!
Apple’s default typeface is Helvetica and they recently recreated a typeface you can download called New York (it’s basically the helvetica version of times new Roman)
When the R train to Queen goes to 92nd st instead in the mornings after I worked overnight. No signs no announcement and wake up in Brooklyn.
Yo this is mad informative. Good work lil shawty
I guess you could call this a Helvetica Standard
The New York City subway stopped progressing and expanding when the city took over the two privately owned subway companies. There used to be three: IND, IRT, and BMT. The IND was owned by the city and the BMT and IRT were privately owned.
took over the two *failing* privately owned subway companies
Just in case anybody got the impression from your post that the reason why the system stopped expanding was the takeover, and that the expansion would have continued if left privatized.
Chicago was very similar in that fashion.
@@joby92 They only failed because the fares were capped so low in a period of high inflation.
City Hall had been hungering to take over the INT and BMT many years before it actually did.
1:26 Wrong! The IND was funded by the city and was public.
And the City merged the BMT & IRT into the IND.
I remember when I was a kid in the '60s in NYC how ancient the subways (signage looked) with serifed faces and generally always covered in a film of dust. When the new signage showed up it was a huge improvement and made it easier to do quick reads of the signs. Mind you, this period of time was dreadful for New York (as was all of the '70s) but this little bit of clarity and sophistication on the subways gave notice that the city may be down but it was certainly not out. I went to art school in the latter part of the '70s and the power of the signage became all the more clear. Helvetica is a strong no-nonsense font, perfect for this application.
Your reports are interesting and different than anything out there! Historically important and meaningful for our posterity!
I sense sarcasm.
0:08 There's 472 stations actually, you checked an old source (it used to be 468 for years, but recently the 7 line was extended to Hudson Yards with 1 more station and the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway was opened, with three more stations).
Some of the first underground stations built in London had different designs on the platforms so that those who were unable to read could tell if they were at the right stop (literacy levels were nowhere near as high as today). Maybe that's part of the reason why the early private companies in NY did the same thing?
Can you folks at cheddar do a piece on dual-named stations? Mostly the ones in Rockaway like Beach 60th St-Straiton Av. (Where is or was Straiton Av?)
Good idea
Old street names, Straiton doesn't exist anymore. Probably went away in the 40s or 50s when they redid the stations from trolley to elevated to subway.
OK. But if they don't exist anymore, why still use the name?
@@BallArtWolf_52 why's City Hall Station still a thing, or any of the other abandoned stations that still have Con Ed running power to them? Not for nothing, but I guess it is what it is buddy.
@@jonathanthomas7228 A: not what I'm talking about. B: so the 6 train can turn around and go back uptown
Not as much of a factor of the font-face, but of standardization and usability of layout and color/formatting.
As a swiss person I'm so proud that a swiss font became an icon for NYC. As we people from switzerland like to say: "Weeer hät's erfunde...?"
Genau!
3:03 That text should be NY Subway's motto.
TH-cam knows I'm a nerd. Great work as always, Cheddar. Love the weird, interesting stories like this.
Can I get a typeface now?
Come on, i don’t want to steal fonts
Helvetica or Standard Medium? No real difference. However, adding the colored route icons was the innovation that really helped navigation. They make it really easy to find your way through the most complicated stations all the way to where you can actually catch the train. That's my memory of NYC -- walking quickly through a busy unfamiliar stations to get to the correct platform.
Amazing how many years London was ahead on design and typeface!
Yep, thank Frank Pick and Edward Johnston for that. And it looks better, to boot.
Honestly this is where the London Underground shines above the NYC Subway. The Underground has an entirely custom font, as well as design language where you can feel the passion that went into it
When I lived in New York, the most frequent stop my family goes to at the time is Canal St. I saw a mosaic sign with the words, Canal St.
For a local here in the boroughs I'm beginning to realize how much there are that I didn't know. Totally worth subscribing to
I'm not a particular fan of Helvetica (though to some people it's as neutral as it gets, to me it's connected to the 1960s/70s and not the best in terms of legibility or versatility).
But I can understand the motivation behind choosing such an overused typeface (or maybe when they initially decided for it, it wasn't overused ...)
As mentioned in the video, one important reason is "availability across technologies". In lettering it's having adhesive letters in various sizes and colours available. You will find that you can get ready-made Helvetica letters in a lot of sizes. A custom typeface would require making these by order.
Another reason, less important for MTA but more for internationally operating companies, would be that there are lots of foreign language versions of Helvetica. Greek? Russian? Vietnamese? All no problem, there's a Helvetica for it.
That said, I enjoy the fact that different cities, companies, countries use their own typographic style. Especially if they are consistent about it. In a reply to another comment I mentioned Johnston which is used everywhere in London Transport and otherwise not so much. A typeface that makes up the character of a city because you won't find it in too many other places. In fact if you use Johnston anywhere in signage people will think of London.
With Helvetica it's not the case. When you take it all together, the black backgrounds, the typical shape of arrows, the line designations in coloured circles and squares, it becomes typical for New York City.
The same Helvetica in white on blue background is used for the wayfinding system of Swiss railways (particularly the state railway SBB CFF FFS, but numerous other operators use the same system). There again it's all the elements taken together that make up the look and feel of the system. Especially a specific set of pictograms. company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die-sbb/profil/sbb-markenportal.html (no English version online)
As a designer of model railways, it's of course an advantage to have the right typeface readily available for all the inscriptions since 1981 (before that they used a so-called standard typeface which is clumsy and hard to get in digital form).
This is really no longer an issue. There are vinyl cutting machines that can take virtually any computer file (font, image) and produce a fully laid out cutout image ready to apply.
@@peterjoseph8881 If you take care of it. When it gets to exotic accented characters one can still see "replacement from whatever font has them because the typeface you chose for the text doesn't". And each time I wonder, don't they notice the mistake or do they just not care?
@@uncinarynin, humAN error is always a factor. The work is only as good as the people who do it.
We are bombarded with signs! However, if we’re looking for a McDonalds or a Starbucks, we can find one because we train our minds to look for a certain icon. So, it makes sense for all subway signs to have a unique look. That helvitica type and the single letter inside a colored circle makes the station much easier to find.
The MTA works great except when Adolf Cuomo raids its piggybank.
In NYC they worry more about the typeface on the signs than they do about homeless people urinating in subway cars. Go figure.
I never thought I would be interested as a New Yorker learning about signs that I never thought about.
Have you done a video as to why the city got rid of street signs that were color coded by borough-gold with black lettering for Manhattan and Staten Island, black with white lettering for Brooklyn, blue with white lettering for the Bronx, and white with blue lettering for Queens-and replaced them with green with white lettering for all five boroughs?
New York copied the concept from other states.
@@captainkeyboard1007 hmm
@@Moodboard39 Thank you for tapping or typing to me.
The resetting of the numbers (and really the Letters) of the trains along with the use of colored discs behind the train designations was likely more important than any typeface, IMHO.
Helvetica was the typeface I learned reading with. My first schoolbooks were set in Helvetica, and even before, my mother lettered the shelf compartments behind the desk of my parents with Helvetica.
As of 2017, the Subway has 472 Stations and 660 miles of track. I don't know where that 230 number is coming from. It hasn't had that little trackage in over a century.
You are right, Kirk.
I love Helvetica and choose that whenever available in software. If not, I go with Arial. In the 1980s, dot-matrix printers always printed text the same. When software got more sophisticated they started to use Times New Roman to show off the details that could be rendered using bitmaps instead of just sending ASCII text to the printer. I've hated for many years that many word processors still default to Times New Roman. I love Helvetica. (And I think Christine Beldon is totally hot!) Keep up the great videos, Cheddar!!!
Microsoft Word has been defaulting to Calibri.
@@RaymondHng Right. I guess I have seen that. Haven't regularly used MS for well over a decade..
Those mosaic signs were fantastic. Bring those back.
The original graphic standards manual thought of everything, and the sign designs were quite elegant. Early on, though, there was a major change to the new sign design from a white background to a black background because it was said to be more readable. In a classic design-by-committee move, the black cap at the top of the signs remained and they added a thin white stripe above the wording to visually separate the sign from the cap.
This is also nice to know. I am a railroad buff.
They didn't really think of everything. There were quite a few deficiencies. The two biggest mistakes were using black lettering on a white field (harder to read than white on black and began to look shabby very quickly because of rail dust), and fixed-size modules which are not the most efficient use of space when retrofitting old stations.
helvetica is a safe font when you’re stuck with typeface. heavy & bold are great for informative headline while light & ultra thin are excellent for paragraphs, problem being, it can be quickly dated.
Even if you don't particularly like Helvetica, watch the documentary about it (Helvetica 2007). It also has a beautiful soundtrack by El Ten Eleven.
Sure, the typeface can provide with a clear visual signal but the message itself and placement of info if of great importance too.
I visited NY in November (I’m Swedish) and saw a few posters with complicated descriptions about disruptions in traffic. Yes, the subway system is complicated but that just felt like all Greek to me. I just moved on and hoped I wouldn’t be affected. A clear message is of great importance for any traveller.
The host did a great job explaining this. She’s great at her job and I don’t want to take away from her by saying: I fucking love her hair. I want to try her style. It’s flattering for sure.
The MBTA in Boston also uses Helvetica on its signs. Better yet, it color-codes the station name sign so you know what line you're on (Red, Green, Orange, Blue and Silver Lines plus Commuter Rail). New York City's MTA should try the same thing
The New York City subway is a large cluster of lines served by various trains. There is more than one line that can be found on a single route. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority lines are on a much smaller scale. The New York City subway system is large and has approximately 27subway lines. In 1969, each subway line had its own color while under the three transit divisions: The IRT, the BMT, and the IND. Years later, the subway routes were designated single colors, representing the lines that are in Manhattan, except the G line, which is in yellow-green and runs through Brooklyn and Queens. The 7 Avenue line of the 1, 2 and 3 trains is red; the Lexington Avenue line of the 4, 5 and 6 trains is green, the Broadway line of the N, Q, R and W trains is yellow, the 6 Avenue line of the B, D, F and M trains is orange, etcetera. This change reduced a lot of confusion that was on the old subway maps.
@@captainkeyboard1007 I've said a few times in other transit-related videos and forums, in a sense NYC's subway is more similar to the Paris Metro than, say, the London Underground, in that Paris also marks their trains by numbers (similar to a bus or streetcar system) instead of colored lines like in Boston and London (the lines in London are marked by name instead of color, but they're still color-coded on the map).
@@andyjay729Include the Washington Metrorail system. It uses the Helvetica font. This printer font resembles closely to Neue Haas Grotesk found in Microsoft Windows 10. Thank you for tapping or typing to me.
2:20 "In 1940, the subway lines were running out of money, so the city merged all 3 lines together." They were running out of money because the city prevented them from raising their fares (which were then $0.05). The city claimed it could do it cheaper . . . then raised the ticket price by $0.05 every few years from 1948 to 1972, finally hitting $0.35, and now nearly $3 today.
Many of the subway cars have Standard Medium print on their number plates. The latest cars R-142, R-142A, R-160, R-160A, R-160B, and the R-179 have Helvetica print on their number plates. I like both, the Helvetica and Standard Medium fonts. The Helvetica font should be the standard lettering on all rapid transit signs. Incidentally, there are 472 train stations.
Sometimes Cheddar really confuses me; there is a world outside of NYC. The NYC videos tend to mostly ignore this. Like for this video, NYC Subways started to use Helvetica because... it was incredibly popular and common. So we aren’t actually getting the story for how Helvetica became so popular, which wasn’t related to NYC and isn’t covered in this video, yet is the answer to the key question posed.
Helvetica was designed to be the most neutral medium. It won't make plain design become fancy. Consistency, wording and color are the key.
And what about icons
Helvetica is used by Sao Paulo's subway too. It is a serious and charm typeface
I'm amazed anyone made it to the end of this video. I had to stop at 2:27. The subject matter plus the narrator's voice put me right out.
Great video u heads at Cheddar always impress
I like it just the way it is now, with originals on every subway station, distinguishing one from the other. Next step, lower the fares and improve the commute.
It's weird - if you change a doc on word to Helvetica, it doesn't look like NYC - but if you put the word 'Subway' in the doc, then you really see it.
In Microsoft Windows, the Helvetica font is named Helsinki.
if it werent for the private companies nyc wouldnt have a subway....
If it wasn't for the private companies, nyc would have still gotten a subway system except it would probably been built cohesively with the rest of the state in mind
Bah, you can keep your Helvetica and its tight letterspacing
Give me Johnston font! That's the best subway font, for sure
I thought they took a page from Apple but apparently, Apple started using Helvetica in OS X ans iOS in like the mid to late 2000's. Nowadays, they use a related typeface called San Francisco.
In Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, the Helvetica font is called Helsinki. Also, Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro closely resembles Helvetica.
@@captainkeyboard1007 I'm pretty sure they had that but not as the font used in the UI of Windows.
Consistent design matters far more than typeface, regardless of what "designers" tell people.Yes, the typeface needs to match the use (i.e. don't use Comic Sans for a CV), but other than that, most normal people can't tell typefaces in the same family apart. Arial vs. Helvetica vs. Roboto etc.pp... matters only to specialists. For everyone else, it matters exactly zilch as long as it's readable and the signage is consistent.
Very interesting. Good to know the background on some of tiled sign stations.
I work for the subway system. I dream in Helvetica.
You are The Best People Around.
I like Akzidenz Grotesk along with Helvetica
Those days: Typefaces had to be shipped from abroad to produce Helvetica at a printing press.
These days: Any kid with a keyboard can produce Helvetica instantly at home.
I don’t see anything wrong with the variations in the mosaic signs on the different stations. I kinda prefer each station to have it’s own look. It makes it easier to remember and keep track of different stops. It’s plain boring if everything is the same.
Stations is Stockholm all have themes (coloured walls, artworks, statues, etc) and it provides something more for the visitors/travellers than just a space to pass through. Our subways are not as old as New York’s of course, so I get that ideas of these spaces differ in different periods of time.
186 dislikes are from people who use Comic Sans on their documents.
Standard Medium (Akzidenz Grotesque) is the better choice, but since they’re practically identical, it doesn’t really matter.
So that's why there are so many cool mosaic signs in Manhattan stations. Cool.
it's been 3 years, we have 472 stations
Lots of these really need major overhaul, I'd argue making sense in a transit system is more important than historical setup
How much does the MTA pay in licensing fees to use Helvetica?
Nothing directly. By the time the MTA switched to Helvetica, licensing was built into design and production software.
I am old enough to (barely) recall the OLD look of the Subway. Wicker seats (plastic) and CLEAN! This while folks could openly smoke cigs. It was nice.
nice video~when I first went to new york, what suprised me is overwheliming amounts of typeface signs… which like shock wave into my brain.Anyway,now I can look into the book mentioned in video to learn more…
Helvetica is one of my favorite fonts. :) This was a very interesting video.
Should’ve used Wingdings font. Best ever !
The world should make an agreement to make Helvetica the unified universal font for all railways and airports and public transits. It will be amazing. Also please ban Comic Sans while at it.
Actually I'm pleased to find everything written in Johnston when I'm in London.
@@uncinarynin okay let's leave the Old World to Johnston Sans then
What would happen if the type face is comic sans?
Helvetica (or at least the Neue variant) is the default font on IOS for those who also don’t know
The IND, its name not withstanding, was publicly owned from its beginning.
NYC: Fails horribly, *Hires professionals*, sees it's not free., "We got this", fails horribly... *Rehires SAME professionals*
Professionals: "We got this"
Richard Kiley! Wow they spared no expense!
This is not just a New York City problem, either. Now imagine dealing with Tokyo's spaghetti-maze transit systems with JR East lines, private railway lines and two different subway systems. Getting everyone to agree on readable Japanese/English bilingual signs was one thing, but then they started station numbering several years ago....
The numbers are actually a good innovation IMHO, especially for visitors to Japan who can't read hiragana/katakana or the Latin alphabet or are still learning them.
The subway certainly wasn’t saved by a typeface in any way. The title of this video is inaccurate...
NYC really put the HEL in Helvetica.
No, I have no idea what I just said. Feel free to explain.
What does Finland's biggest airport have to do with this?
@ I see what you did there. 😉
Fun fact helvete means hell in Swedish. So every time I hear helvetica I start to giggle
I bet the producer of this just learned about the Wilhelm Scream last week.
The weeknd worked at American Apparel and he used their Helvetica font in his first mixtapes
Hel-ve-ti-ca stan-daaaaaaaard!
Damn the anime was more popular than I thought, this is the third comment making reference lmao
Next video: What happened to the New York accent?
A pigeon inside of a subway car?! New York is nuts. I lived in Mexico City for fifteen years -- ain´t got nothin' on New York. Never ever saw a bird on the subway.
T O N E
D E A F
Yeah, unifying the subway by selling them all to the city saved the subway system by making the signs legible. Ask anyone who loves in New York and we'll tell you its been wonderful, everything is up to....wait, Target existed in the 1960s?