How Helvetica Took Over the NYC Subway

Jennifer 8. Lee takes a typographic tour of the New York subway system with Paul Shaw, author of the encyclopedic “The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway” for AIGA last month.

(As a publishing nerd “future of the newspaper industry” side note, it’s worth noting that Lee’s piece runs about 1500 words but I think it’s online-only, appearing only in the Times’s City Room weblog and not in print. The prose is also hyperlink-heavy — much context would be lost if it ran in print without the links.)

★ Thursday, 4 December 2008