Minimalists Win the Great NYC Subway Map Debate, 50 Years Later

Subway riders are leaving behind the MetroCard, orange-seat subway cars, and now the subway map too.

Last week, the MTA unveiled a new subway map that officials say will be easier to read and navigate. The new map’s bright colors and hard angles pop off the map, giving it a diagrammatic feel. 

The map echoes a short-lived 1972 map created by Massimo Vignelli. That version, designed as a service map, introduced straight lines and minimized information to only what customers needed to navigate the subway system. The modernist map became a cult-favorite among New Yorkers despite being taken out of service after just 7 years.

“The subway map is both an iconic symbol of New York and a tool that everyday riders and first-time users of our system use to get around,” said New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow in a statement. “This modern redesign makes it easier to navigate the system – especially during service changes – and has a quintessential New York look that riders will appreciate for years to come.”

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For four decades, New Yorkers have used a more geographic-based map. John Tauranac, former chair of the MTA's map committee in the 1970s, led the push for this approach. A new map designed by a team at Michael Hertz Associates, which included sculptor Nobuyuki Siraisi, replaced the Vignelli map in 1979.

The familiar beige map has gently curving subway lines, a street grid, and clearly defined landmarks and parks. The subway system sprawls out over New York like an octopus, overwhelming the landmass with different colors and various labels.

Taraunac suggests those details help with wayfinding, but minimalists like Vignelli might call it clutter.

“You want to go from Point A to Point B, period. The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.” Vignelli said in 2006.

Subway map design has long been controversial. While the Hertz map prioritized geographic accuracy, the Vignelli map had a sleek aesthetic and clean navigability features.

Tauranac shared his harsh criticism of the new redesign via email with Untapped New York, writing, “It provides little if any perspective on the city that the subway serves. It has the subway operating in a void.”

This comment echoes a statement Tauranc made during what was dubbed "The Great Subway Debate" at Cooper Union in April 1978, where he and Vignelli defended their respective design choices. "I know what New York City looks like, and it doesn't look like this," Tauranac recalled saying. “But that's really the key to the difference between a quasi-geographic map and a schematic map,” he told Untapped New York when we interviewed him in January.

However, the new map isn’t a pure Vignelli design. The original was more muted, with gray parks and beige water instead of the traditional green and blue. The new map doesn’t distort the surface to the same extent as the Vignelli map did, and with more annotations than the original, this new design might seek to split the difference between the minimalist and the realistic approaches. (It retains the official brand colors established by the Hertz maps.)

In any case, Vignelli, who passed away in 2014, didn’t live to see his diagrammatic map make a comeback. Some design and transit nerds are excited about the new map, but some everyday users expressed trepidation.

In the Vignelli map’s original run, it was criticized for distorting the city’s surface in confusing ways. Tourists who would get off at the bottom of Central Park would find it was far further to walk to the top than it appeared on the map because the park was drawn wider and scrunched vertically.

The MTA says that this new map will help users navigate the system and improve its legibility, accessibility, and clarity. It may make it easier for users to facilitate transfers, navigate lines based on color, see which lines run express, or adapt during service changes.

Officials see the new map as part of a broader effort to modernize the system as it continues to bounce back from the pandemic. In the face of existential threats from the Trump administration, the MTA and the City continue to roll out ambitious new plans like congestion pricing.

“This is a lynchpin moment like 1979,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in a press conference Wednesday. “The new MTA is focused on a quality, 21st century customer experience, and it's about time our map caught up,” he said.

Next, read Untapped New York’s interview with mapmaker John Tauranac and learn about the secrets of Vignelli’s 1972 map!