The origins of the map lied in the problems of the previous decade. In the mid-
1960s New York City Transit Authority was facing unprecedented difficulties in
delivering information to its riders:
Inconsistent and out-of-date signage still referred to the old operating companies
(IRT, BMT, IND) long after they had been subsumed under a single public authority.
An influx of 52 million visitors for the 1964 New York World’s Fair (April 1964 to
October 1965) highlighted shortcomings in wayfinding information for public
transportation in New York City.
Structural changes to the subway network which costed 100 millions to reduce
bottlenecks, in particular the Chrystie Street Connection, effectively merged two
of the three historical networks.
To deal with this, the TA created the role of Director of Public Information and
Community Relations, and hired former newspaper reporter Len Ingalls. In his later
years, Vignelli often said that the most important factor in the success of a design
project was having a good client, and he praised Ingalls for being a very good
one. Ingalls began an overhaul of both signage and the subway map.
When Unimark International opened an office in New York in 1965, Mildred Cons-
tantine, curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) put Ingalls in
touch with Vignelli, who headed up the New York office from the end of 1965. In
the Spring of 1966, the TA engaged Unimark to redesign the subway signage and
review the ongoing changes to the map. Robert Noorda and Massimo Vignelli
created a system of signage that the TA adopted and which still pervades every
station in the subway today.