Comments on: BART Wayfinding: The Shotgun Technique

By: David

David — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:20:00 +0000

ben,

those boston signs are beautiful. They look straight out of a 1950s butcher shop.

By: David

David — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:12:11 +0000

In Los Angeles, the aforementioned Metro Rail and Metro Line use Scala Sans Bold.

Also, the city of Lawndale just south of LA uses Scala Sans for a lot of their street signage, at least along Hawthorne Blvd. They have markers with the city name at public parking lots, and I believe the converted the street name plates on every corner to Scala Sans, with oldstyle numerals and uppper- and lowercase letters to boot!

By: benjamin shaykin

benjamin shaykin — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:22:26 +0000

and…

By: ben shaykin

ben shaykin — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 02:32:56 +0000

More from Boston (or rather, Cambridge)…

By: Alexandre Ataide

Alexandre Ataide — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:05:20 +0000

What a relief! At the time I wrote my last comment I was very angry! But anyway, we all commit mistakes don’t we? I’m still a fan of typographica!

And yes, Brazil is a third world country. (At least I learned that in school).

By: christine m.

christine m. — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:22:53 +0000

i’m glad someone finally made a comment about Mr. Cole’s use of “third world” as a metaphor for an unpleasant experience. as a a resident and citizen of the first world, but loyal to my third world roots, i took offense to that comment and felt it was entirely uneccessary to use in relation to a discussion on type. other than that, however, as a student of graphic design in toronto, canada i thoroughly enjoyed reading through this discussion and found it very useful in my exploration of typography and its function in society.

By: Derrick Schultz

Derrick Schultz — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:11:53 +0000

Is Brazil a third world country?

By: Stephen Coles

Stephen Coles — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:51:07 +0000

Snap! Thanks for putting me in my place, Alexandre. My wording was obviously careless.

By: Alexandre Ataide

Alexandre Ataide — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:44:16 +0000

Forgive-me if I may sound rude, Mr. Coles, but did you mean to say that in the third world we don’t have any good quality signage? From the coments I’ve read in this post, I think here (In Bras�lia, Brazil, where I live) the subway signage is pretty good, maybe even better than that of San Fransisco. Anyway, I belive the major diference from our subway systems is that here in the third world we don’t have terrorists, so we can always take our trains with no fear of being exploded, no matter what happens with you and your political affairs from the first world.

By: Jamison

Jamison — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:48:53 +0000

I had no idea they’d painted Embarcadero as well. I rarely take BART, and haven’t been to Embarcadero on Muni Metro lately, and Embarcadero always stuck me as better designed because as the marble walls get dirty it brings out the angular lines and details cut into the walls. Its a rare acknowledgment of the reality that train stations are train stations.

Now, what I really wanted to say is that before talking about the mismatched typefaces, lets get off the station platform and back to the mezzanine… All too often arial would be a step up from the hand written signs posted at station booths in Downtown SF, Muni is even worse with often half a dozen hand written signs like “this is not BART” posted next to another reading “for exact change go to BART ticket machines and press H”.

Muni’s use of type (or rather lack of) is much worse then BART, but it’s pretty much irrelevant because they share facilities and anyone entering the station will be confronted with Muni’s signs as well, even if they’re only there for BART.

I think the situation backs up the idea of giving BART stations a flavor of that city as well, because at different places BART shares station facilities with SamTrans, Caltrain, Muni, AC Transit, Amtrak, ACE and how many other local agencies? Even if BART were to come up with very consistent signs with good type that support easy wayfinding, they would not work with every other system.