8 ms·
Ways to Design the Letter 'M'
- dstyrb 11y agoI have created a supplementary figure. http://imgur.com/NG5cWmJ http://imgur.com/NG5cWmJ
- robzyb 11y agoThank you. Am I being to harsh in accusing The Atlantic/CityLab from clearly not putting the reader first when they created this article?
- keithpeter 11y agoAha, the solutions. Now I have a Christmas quiz for a bunch of graphic design students. Excellent. Liverpool: many of us still call it Merseyrail despite the attempts at rebranding. Birmingham-Wolverhampton has a Metro as well which I could not see in a quick scan. Officially called Midland Metro http://nxbus.co.uk/the-metro/ http://nxbus.co.uk/the-metro/ The new extension into the centre of Birmingham will be quite cosmopolitan when it actually gets finished.
- fredoralive 11y agoMerseyrail is still called that, this article is more to do with using an "M" symbol rather than the name itself. Midland Metro uses an "n" in common with other Network West Midlands stuff, so doesn't qualify for this chart. http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/ http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/
- keithpeter 11y agoOK, your list, your choice (shrugs). [Just imagine what would have happened if it was Chester that became economically important 150 years ago rather than Liverpool? Deesiderail, or DRail]
- riffraff 11y agoFWIW, I think the one marked "Genoa" looks the same in all of italy. EDIT: ok, "most" of it.
- whoopdedo 11y agoIsn't the fascinating thing here that "metro" has become the universal moniker for urban mass transit? Even in places that speak a language unrelated to Latin. Germany has the U-bahn and S-bahn, Sweden the T-bana. And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoUniversal? I don't think "metro" sees use in the US for any mass-transit related purpose, and I'd be surprised to see it used for buses anywhere.
- desdiv 11y agoLos Angeles: LA Metro Washington D.C.: Washington Metro Miami: Metrorail
- thaumasiotes 11y agoFair enough. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of words rather than names. "Detroit Metro Airport" is a use of metro in relation to mass transit, too, but I suspect not what whoopdedo was talking about.
- brent_maxwell 11y agoI hear the word "Metro" used as a generic term for transit systems often. I think it reflects the variety of transportation options usually included in a "Metro" system: subway, elevated trains, street cars, buses, etc.
- Angostura 11y ago> And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground. It's never called the Metro here. The Metro is a free newspaper.
- grabcocque 11y ago
- amake 11y agoPet peeve: "Xian" is an entirely different thing from "Xi'an", which is the correct orthography for the city referred to in the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an
- thaumasiotes 11y agoThe chinese don't worry too much about pinyin. Arguably the "correct" orthography would be 西安. How do you feel about 陕西?
- amake 11y agoWhat the Chinese think about pinyin is not relevant, nor is Chinese-language orthography. We are clearly communicating in English, and in English the correct orthography for the city in question is "Xi'an". This is important because "Xian" is an entirely unrelated, distinct syllable.
- lmm 11y agoLanguage is a tool for communication. In English "Xian" unambiguously refers to the city in question (e.g. searching for it will take you to the correct page), unless you're saying there's some other "Xian" it would be confused with? (English orthography has always been ambiguous; accents are conventionally optional in English even when their absence is misleading regarding pronunciation, e.g. "cafe")
- Symbiote 11y agoThere's a Xian County [1]. I don't think anyone would accept "Newyork", even though a Google search goes to the correct place — hardly a good measure of ambiguity. The pronunciation is different, so it could be confused with "Newark" with some accents. English has enough ambiguity without introducing more, especially from carelessness or laziness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_County https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_County
- Evgeniuz 11y ago> Let’s just hope the fine folks at the Kiev metro, with their underwear logo design, weren’t going for meaningful symbolism. They actually were going for meaningful symbolism, just not about underwear :) Green diamonds at the bottom are simplified chestnut tree leaves. Chestnut is a symbol of Kyiv.
- CodeSheikh 11y agoWhere's McDonald's logo?
- mpitt 11y ago> The universal symbol for a city’s Metro system is a big “M.” Except in Germany, where it's a big “U” (for U-Bahn).
- dagw 11y agoOr in Norway and Sweden where it is a "T"
- elthran 11y agoOr any other city where they don't call it a metro
- GFischer 11y agoExactly. In Argentina it's a "Subte", in Japan it's "Chikatetsu". However, Metro seems to be the most popular name (it's used in Madrid and Sao Paulo too).
- lunchladydoris 11y agoExcept in Tokyo it is called the Tokyo Metro. The logo is even in the article.
- GFischer 11y agoI was misled by (the spanish language) Wikipedia :) , you're right, it talks about the heart shape and everything. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(sistema_de_transporte)#Terminolog.C3.ADa https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(sistema_de_transporte)#... I can personally confirm that in Buenos Aires it's called Subte and the word Metro is used nowhere in Argentina or Uruguay.
- rangibaby 11y agoTokyo has both a metro and a subway (chikatetsu literally means "underground railway"). Nagoya has a subway, and the logo is a kind of tunnel.
- lentil_soup 11y ago"To gain insight into why a transit agency would bother to put so much effort into its M logo, we turned to whiz graphic designer Michael Bierut of Pentagram. His initial response: maybe they shouldn’t." That's a weird statement from a designer. I myself find it great that they care about it. These symbols become part of the city's identity, I'd say that's pretty important.
- bmn_ 11y ago> These symbols become part of the city's identity, I'd say that's pretty important. Vastly more important is the proper purpose of the signage. It signals to someone unfamiliar with the surroundings there is an underground train station here. The targeted persons who require this signage and are helped most by it are predominantly not residents of the city and therefore have little reason to feel identity or affiliation. Much like regulated traffic signs, it is better that cities do not design their own unique logos, but use a standardised one. See the paragraph on http://mic-ro.com/metro/metrologos.html http://mic-ro.com/metro/metrologos.html starting with "Some logos are ubiquitous, at least nationwide" for places where cooperation won out over individuality.
- Angostura 11y agoAs a Londoner, today I learned what all those big Ms I've seen in foreign cities mean.
- Grue3 11y agoIt says something that I use the metro in my city (Moscow) everyday and I couldn't pick which one of the logos is supposed to be the logo of Moscow Metro. I was thinking row 3, 4th from the left, but nope.
- huhtenberg 11y agoIt's a pointy slab serif M [1], though there are numerous variations as the "brand management" wasn't exactly the thing back in 1930s... or 40s, or even 80s. [1] http://imgur.com/Q7rHRlx http://imgur.com/Q7rHRlx
- eCa 11y ago> Several M’s have wings, Prague and Bucharest among them [...] Considering how the alternative Prague Metro 'M' looks[1], I'm pretty sure it's meant to be an arrow. [1] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3024/2283474963_f84830eb16.jpg https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3024/2283474963_f84830eb16.jpg
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoI wonder if the Nanjing logo has any connection to "市".
- moscowmetro 11y agoThis is how one designs the letter M: http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/metro/logo/process/ http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/metro/logo/process/