transport
whatdavoloves.com. This brief but clever social-networky video web site published by Queensland Transport in Australia is really an anti-speeding campaign. The twist is sudden and unexpected.
Underground Typography. 1957: “It’s a big job. But for the sake of the subway itself and for the sake of the city it serves and for the people of that city it must be done soon.”
For all the urban type spotters, typographer and historian Paul Shaw turns out an epic history on the evolution of type and wayfinding design in the NYC (and a few other) subway systems. Of particular interest is the push and pull of internal and external influences, and the spread of good ideas from one transit system to another across the Atlantic.
Previously from Shaw on this blog: typography and fascist architecture in Rome.
Previously from Shaw on this blog: typography and fascist architecture in Rome.
Errata
In January 2008, I published an article in Communication Arts on grassroots design initiatives effecting civic change. I wrote about the Gowanus mural commemorating the deaths of three young boys killed in traffic, and a public pledge at the mural’s unveiling by the New York City Department of Transportation to put $5 million towards improvements in downtown Brooklyn in FY08. This was August 2007, after 10 years of advocacy since the outraged community first took to the streets in 1997 over pedestrian deaths.
A year later the promised safety fixtures are nowhere to be found.
We regret the error.
The most useful subway poster you'll never see. The story of Vignelli's subway map is fairly well known, but I hadn't seen his route poster before. The poster is an elegant table of every major station in the subway system and how to get there from your current station, listing which line to take and where to transfer.
Design a Better Bike Rack. An open design competition sponsored by the New York City Department of Transportation, in partnership with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the support of Google Inc. and Transportation Alternatives. Designs are solicited for sidewalk and in-building parking, respectively. The winning racks will be produced and installed by the DoT.
Refused by His City, Man Jailed for Painting a Crosswalk. “Whitney Stump was tired of drivers ignoring stop signs at an intersection in his Muncie, Indiana neighborhood. After futile attempts to get the city to install crosswalks, Stump took matters into his own hands and painted one in at the corner of Dicks and North streets. Then he got arrested.”
Poor African roads keep the continent poor. Cumbersome border crossing procedures also exacerbate problems.
CrashStat. Display pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities from 1995-2005 on a Google Map of New York City.
4 December 2007 | LINK | Filed in
cities, database, google, gov, infrastructure, mapping, org, transport
Health warning labels for cars. “All advertising for new cars will have to carry cigarette-style ‘health warnings’ about their environmental impact, under a European plan to force manufacturers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Companies that produce the most polluting cars will also have to pay penalties of up to £5,000 per vehicle, with the proceeds used to reduce the cost of the most efficient cars. Advertisements in newspapers and magazines, will have to devote at least 20 per cent of the space to details about fuel economy and CO2 emissions.... Car advertisements will have to carry colour-coded emissions labels... with bands ranging from dark green to red.”
