The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of DC Metro’s Design and Wayfinding Evolution
New signage for Washington’s Metrorail aims to boost ridership by helping people get around more easily. The transit system’s original designers might not have approved.
A commuter talks on a cell phone while waiting for a train at L'Enfant Plaza station in Washington, DC, in 2023. The Metro station’s is getting a lot of new signage.
Photographer: Eric Lee/BloombergThe soaring Brutalist concrete vaults of Washington, DC’s Metrorail network, designed by architect Harry Weese, are as monumental as the tourist attractions that the rapid transit system shuttles riders to and from every day. Just as essential to Metro’s visual identity is its distinctive wayfinding system — a minimalist collection of pylons designed by modernist graphic designer Massimo Vignelli. Yet it has been subject to alterations and experimentations of varying quality since its early years.
In a 1990 monograph, Vignelli made it clear he was disappointed in changes that had been imposed on the transit network since it opened in 1976. “The whole system was so well designed that there was very little need for graphics,” he wrote of his wayfinding system. “However, someone finally found a way to clutter it with redundant signs.”