The Conmemorative Edition of the subway in 2007
At the end of 2007, Mark Rozzo, an editor at Men’s Vogue magazine, invited Vignelli to submit a commemo-
rative edition of his map for inclusion in a ‘design classics’ edition of the magazine.
This invitation precipitated the thinking of the team at Vignelli Associates, who had for some time been
considering how they would do the map differently. Massimo Vignelli, Yoshiki Waterhouse, and Beatriz
Cifuentes worked together to build a new, up-to-date map from scratch.
Their general princi-
ple of making the map
remained the same, of a
systematic and minima-
list design, they added
the specific requirement
that the map should
preserve spatial relations
between stations.
For example if one
station is east of another
station in real life, then it
must be so on the map.
This defused one of the
most persistent criti-
cisms of the 1972 map.
Their wholly new map
was released through
the May 2008 edition
of Men’s Vogue: within
hours, all 500 signed
prints were sold for
charity at US $299 each.