Thoughts and photos from AIGA’s event “Navigating the Labyrinth”

Last night’s event with Paul Shaw, Massimo Vignelli, Tom Geismar, Jan Conradi and other wonderful speakers was interesting and introspective. As Massimo noted when he went up to speak, most of the people in the room were not even born when he and Bob Noorda were hired to design the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual.

Some additional thoughts and quotes I quickly wrote down yesterday include:

Massimo on design:
“Great thing about design is that it can simplify complicated systems”
“Design is not something you do to get rich, it’s a civil responsibility”
“Design is about problem solving, not adorning.”

Massimo on the MTA:
“When working with big organizations you have to make sure the implementation is done properly, because most often they will take your work and destroy it”

Massimo on the MTA map:
“They want to put too much information on the map, they want to make it into ‘War & Peace’”

Michael Hertz on signage condition:
“We used to say, when god wants to punish a typeface he sends it to Bergen Street”

And last one, from an MTA worker (I didn’t catch his name) in the audience currently working on designs and signs, to Massimo:
“The Graphics Standards Manual you designed is the bible, we just tweak it here and there”

It was a great and lively discussion, revealing the reality of working with very large organizations. I bought the beautiful Unimark International book that was on sale there and Massimo and Jan Conradi signed it for me (even Massimo’s signature is beautifully designed…). The beautiful and limited edition Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story, designed by Paul Shaw and Abby Goldstein was also available, as well as some of the original Graphics Standards Manuals.

You can see larger photos on flickr.