This not That: Why the Massimo Vignelli is important

American design is an amalgamation of different styles, and origins. Although Massimo Vignelli is Italian by heritage, the New York City subway map he designed, while living in New York, for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), in 1972, is notable and, in all respects American. His subway map is iconic for New York City. Even if it is not being used in subway stations today, it has not been forgotten, and still sparks discourse because of its unconventional design. As a design object in the Museum of Modern Art collection, the Vignelli map should be included in Russell Flinchum’s book American Design in place of William Bonnell’s poster “Celebration! 200 Years USA/50 Years CCA,” designed in 1976 for the Container Corporation of America (CCA). Although the CCA is known for their use of top designers in their advertisements, the Bonnell’s poster does not exemplify the company’s creative background. From a Graphic Design perspective it does not posses the historical importance or value of Vignelli’s subway map.

The Container Corporation of America was the leader in design-conscious corporate American advertising. Founded by Walter Paepcke in 1926, the CCA became synonymous with good design in 1937 when Charles T. Coiner (who was later joined by colleague Leo Lionni) was chosen to direct a series of advertisements for the company. Because Papcke had a strong understanding of the power of art and design, he was aware of the importance of creativity and design in a successful business (Papcke was also a patron of designers, for example, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.) As a designer himself, Charles T. Coiner understood the importance of well-designed advertisements. He choose inventive and engaging graphic designers, such as A.M. Cassandre, Herbert Bayer, Jean Carlu and Paul Rand, to design CCA’s advertising posters. Due to Paepcke and Coiner’s shared vision, the company was seen as a progressive and refreshing alternative to other big businesses of the era. In 1976, William Bonnell was chosen to design the CCA’s 50-year anniversary poster. Bonnell’s poster was a simple background image overlapped by diagonally set white type declaring, “Celebration! 200 Years USA/50 Years CCA.” William Bonnell’s poster does not exemplify the CCA’s tradition of fresh modern advertisements. The poster is by no means bad design, but, because many prominent historians and critics, notably R. Roger Remington and Steven Heller respectively, see the CCA as important and noteworthy corporate design, any example should reflect the best quality of work that the CCA commissioned. Bonnell’s poster does not rise to those standards.

Massimo Vignelli’s subway map for the MTA is significant because it was the first map to combine all the borough’s subway lines in a concise, meaningful and visually uncluttered way. Until 1970 the subways were separate: the Inter Borough Rapid Transit line, the Brooklyn-Manhattan line etc. The MTA was created as a way to house all public transit systems, under one authority. This alone was a big change to the way Public Transportation worked in New York City but by implementing a system of colors, lines and dots signifying routes, lines and station, the idea of public Transit in the New York area became even more comprehensible.

Vignelli’s map of New York City’s underground transit system used only 45 and 90-degree angles. His representation of above-ground landmarks (or lack there of) like Central Park, was skewed to fit his artistic vision and consequently, led to the map's rejection by the public. Massimo Vignelli's design for the MTA map is a demonstration of an aesthetically pleasing design that fails because it attempts to be beautiful at the expense of being practical. Many people, especially designers, believe that a design that uses all the right “design techniques” (a grid, the respected typeface, etc.) is inherently better. But, this is hardly the case, and Massimo Vignelli's subway map is a distinct example of this design problem and thus should be studied and discussed for its lack of practicality, as well as, its aesthetic beauty.

In the Modernist vein, Vignelli’s map was designed to include only the necessary information: each subway line and each station. Vignelli represented the subway lines with colored lines and the stations with dots. This representation of the system deviated from the actual geography of New York for aesthetic and rational reasons.
On Vignelli’s map the lines are grouped in like areas: e.g. going from Manhattan to Brooklyn, or at combined stations, even though the physical subway lines might not run near each other. Vignelli states that it's not necessary for a commuter to know exactly how the train runs under the East River, just that it goes to Brooklyn or Queens.

In the movie Helvetica Massimo Vignelli speaks with great pride of his work for MTA. Vignelli believes that although some of the general public took issue with his work, he created a clear, concise map that had no fragmentation, “If I made a mistake here it was not making the geography abstract, the water beige, the park grey instead of green, but it was just the fact of indicating those things. If it was just blank it would have been better.”

Although Massimo Vignelli stands by his subway map, it has gotten a variety of public and professional criticism. Wilburn Bonnell, a New York designer who also designed for the CCA, thought the incident with Vignelli’s map was “[the] graphic design equivalent of the Pruitt-Loge housing development: Impractical, elitist Modernism succumbing to the practical, flawed imperfections of everyday life.” Unlike William Bonnell’s “Celebration!” poster, Massimo Vignelli’s subway map has made a lasting impression in Graphic Design history (and New York City history) through its conflict and “perfect imperfections.”

Today we can still see Massimo Vignelli’s impact on the New York City subway system; The signage he designed to compliment his map is currently being used in all subway stations, which still implements Vignelli’s beloved typeface, Helvetica. Even though the colors we see today (the red, green, blue, yellow, etc.) denoting lines and routes, are different from the 1972 colors that Vignelli chose, the idea of using colors was his. The rich history of the Vignelli subway map is why it should be a noted Design Object in the American Design collection. Good design isn’t necessarily the popular choice. Sometimes, when the functionality of the design fails in the way Massimo Vignelli’s map did, the flaws divulge more about the integration of design into culture than a more accepted solution ever could.