The New York Subway Debate captures a famous face-off between rival schools of map design.
Photo courtesy Standards Manual
Design
Reliving the New York Subway Map Debate
A new book brings fresh insights into the 1978 showdown between modernist designer Massimo Vignelli and his cartographer critics.
For fans of transit cartography, the New York Subway Map Debate of April 20, 1978, is remembered as a legendary showdown between two irreconcilable approaches.
On that evening inside Cooper Union’s Great Hall, Italian designer Massimo Vignelli attempted, in vain, to defend his abstract map of New York City’s subway system against the push for a more accurate and detailed one being ushered in by John Tauranac, then the chairman of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority’s map committee.