While one may be tempted to use all manner of exclamatory marks to further amplify the message of one's posters, proper punctuation almost always enhances clarity. Consider the difference in the following:

No War on Iran!

Versus

No! War on Iran!

Or even

No! War! On Iran!

Wow! Back in March 2006, I blogged an idea installing a compass rose at subway exits to help emerging travelers find their way. I posted a stencil design to help inspire action. Three weeks later, graffitti roses appeared in lower manhattan. And now a year-and-a-half later, the New York City Department of Transportation announces a plan to implement it.

The DoT will test the designs in midtown, around the heavily touristed Grand Central area. The context specific labels are a nice innovation, not just pointing north, but naming the nearest street in each direction.

See the official DoT press release here and a NY Times article here.

Folks reading my most recent post about the New York City’s implementation of the compass rose by subway exits may have thought the Department of Transportation took its inspiration from my blog. Not so.

I came up with the idea in conversation with out-of-towner Micah Anderson over dinner with the folks from Eggplant Active Media back on March 4, 2006 and later posted it to this blog.

Graffiti roses showed up near downtown exits three weeks later, though I was never sure if my post inspired this. After kottke.org picked up my link, I received this email:

hey man,
i am NOMAD, I have been doing the compass rose graffiti, someone just showed me your post on it,
great minds think alike....

However, while this was all in March 2006, last week’s New York Times article on the DoT’s 2007 implementation of the compass, cites the new transportation commissioner who says she got the idea from “an Upper East Side man who was among about 20 New Yorkers quoted in The New York Times in January 2006 in an article about practical ways to improve the city.”

But wait, there’s more!

After my post about the official NYC rose was picked up by a couple of blogs, I received an email from Mary Ciuffitelli who says she proposed the idea publicly back in 1992:

Hey John,

I like your website and design, but I have some news for you.

In 1992, I received an award from The Municipal Art Society for this compass rose idea. MAS ran a big competition called Design New York. There were seven winners out of 1500 entries, followed by an exhibit, an awards ceremony, a lot of press (including the New York Times), NBC TV News interviews, etc. I have my original sketch, award letter, ceremony program, tape of the TV interview, all the documents.

Fifteen years ago, there was talk of the city implementing the idea. In the meantime, friends and I talked about going guerrilla and just spray-painting compasses all over the subway system. I wish we had. I was working at a design studio back then, and there was plenty of enthusiasm. We designed a stencil for our plan based on the floor compass in the subway at Grand Central Station. If I keep digging through my stuff, I’ll find that drawing as well.

There were some pretty great ideas that came out of that contest. (Including a submission very close to mine.) Time to look back before setting down the history. This NY Times article boils down my idea to one sentence, but my submission included slightly more elaborate suggestions to reflect neighborhood character and landmarks.

Designing a Better New York, September 24, 1992 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DA1F3BF937A1575AC0A964958260
Since it looks like the idea is on the brink of becoming a permanent part of New York City design, I would like to set the record straight. Maybe you’d like to help me.

Yours in brilliant ideas,
Mary

In the meantime, the folks at the Eyebeam OpenLab and Graffitti Research Lab generously let me use their laser cutter to produce a couple of stencils. I have 20 compass roses and 20 North arrows. Want to help put this up?

Send your postal address and PayPal me $2.00 for first class postage and I’ll send you one.

A year ago, I received an email from “Tony:”

“I have looked all over the web, and just can’t find the simple themes that can be posted to the back of poster board or foam board and used at street vigils. I just need simple stuff for 11 by 17 AND 8 1/2 BY 11 COPYING.

Can you help? The power of one or two people in public holding simple antiwar protest messages is great. I just can’t find anything on the net that isn’t too artsy-fartsy, or too damn pacifist-wimpy.”

I smacked into this “artsy-fartsy” factor again a few weeks ago when United for Peace and Justice asked if I could turn out some poster designs on short notice. They sent their final copy and I set to thinking about how to represent things iconographically in a beautiful, compelling way. I rummaged through the usual toolbox (coffins, dollars, boots, ribbons, etc.) as well as play with color and typographic notes (big X’s, oversized punctuation, etc.) One slogan in particular raised an interesting problem: how to graphically represent “community” for marches in eleven very different cities.

Nevertheless, over the weekend’s iteration the org requested the gradual removal of all imagery, iconography, and embellishment. I was trying to do something graphically interesting to myself, but the group had a very specific use case in mind. The posters were not intended for pasting on the street, to attract passersby with flourish, humor, or imagery. They wanted something to be carried high and read from a distance, particularly when reproduced in photos, newspaper clippings, or seconds-long TV news highlights. As such, these were props to represent the march in memory as much as in person, to disappear and punch the message through network editing and newspaper cropping. The simpler and bolder the better.

With a little more time I would have refined these further, but here are the results below. Click on a thumbnail to download a printable PDF.

Gate 4 in Terminal 2 of Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, AZ is not meant to be used.

Behind the black stanchions, the roughly 50 x 50 foot space has no TV, no gift stand, no seats; just a row of outlets, a few windows, and a single column supporting the mostly uninterrupted, open space. Which of course makes it a perfect space for kids to wrestle and run, for strollers to park, and for bloggers to plugin their laptops and cellphones and lounge on the floor for a few restful minutes. It’s just a big, empty playroom — and a breath of fresh air, particularly after standing in line for an hour, when your departure gate is crammed, and you’re about to spend the next 5½ hours of your life hunched over your knees in steerage.

I suppose it only works because the space was relatively uncrowded — the black ropes keeping most out, but having no affect on those who toddle right under them, or the rest whose craving for free electricty overrides the risk of a stern talking to. The space probably would not have worked if this were an actual functioning departure gate. I suppose all the rigid rows of plastic seats are a good way of making sure luggage and bodies don’t collide.

But it seems like a fine idea — a sort of indoor, public park. I wish more places had uninterrupted, unstructured, uncommercialized open space. More airports should do this.