In 1992 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) unrolled a project called “Poetry in Motion,” and started slipping placards with poems in between the advertising panels that line subway cars.  It’s always a nice surprise to find oneself, standing in a rush hour car, facing a scrap of Robert Frost instead of an ad for storage space or teeth whitening, especially if the poem, as they often are, particularly relevant.  In the same way, it was a special pleasure to receive a MetroCard this month with the word “optimism” printed on the back.  It’s part of a large-scale artwork, “Project Optimism,” by artist Reed Seifer.  He designed the graphic years ago, as a student, and began by printing it out on buttons and handing them out to friends.  Then he collaborated with the MTA to print the word on over 30,000 cards, which have been distributed to riders randomly over the past two years.

It’s been suggested that the artwork is a rouse by the MTA to get riders to forget the inadequacies of the system.  But I find it, well, optimistic.  The past years have been rough going for some of us, and just seeing one word like this in an unexpected place can set a new idea in your head, or dispel the not-so-terribly optimistic ones that are already planted there.  The MTA could have sold the space on the back of the MetroCard to advertisers, printed one of their own lethargic slogans (“If You See Something, Say Something”) or just left it empty.  I hope that more words are forthcoming.

The New York Times used their hallowed Op Ed page on Sunday to endorse the new Apple Store planned for the mezzanine in Grand Central Station.  Some have been concerned about the crowds, and about locating such a brazenly commercial endeavor in the grand old station.  In fact the Station is already terribly crowded, and already filled with shops, including Duane Reade, Starbucks, and an excellent food court and food market.

The Times wonders why both Apple and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) are being so cagey about the store’s design, and asks them to release plans.  Apple has always been secretive about new product and store designs.  And this time, I suspect, they don’t want to face a flood of ridicule similar the one they faced earlier this year, when Steve Jobs attended a City Council meeting in Cupertino, California and presented a rendering for a ludicrously-designed new Apple headquarters building there.  The huge, glowing glass donut, set down in lush gardens, looks like some hippie’s (or some six-year-old’s) idea of what a high-tech corporate campus is.  As with the Grand Central Station store, and their new products, I’m sure Apple has a seamless, sophisticated design that they’re holding in reserve.  It’s a way that the brand builds drama, and it’s entirely successful.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is once again playing with their graphics.  The agency is testing updated platform signs that list the stops along each subway route.  The previous graphic was an 11x17 black and white sheet that looked as if it had been designed and printed at an MTA worker’s cubicle.  The new ones are finer graphically but unnecessary.  What confuses riders aren’t the stops along the route, but the way old, iconic routes like the F have changed, and the way trains, particularly on the weekends, take alternate routes.

Much more troubling to me are the graphics for the five-borough subway map.  In 1979 the MTA abandoned the graphically exciting but informationally confusing 1972 Massimo Vignelli-designed map (shown above) for one by Michael Hertz, a predecessor of today’s map, which added layers of information about the above-ground world, including major streets and bodies of water.  Then last year, after years of incremental changes, the TA unveiled a more thoroughly updated map which distorted the already-not-accurate landmasses for clarity.  So now Manhattan, that elegant sliver of an island, looks like a pickle, and Brooklyn and Queens run together together like wet pancakes.  The map’s been drained of any last bit of physical reality and become a diagram entirely unrelated to geography, like the London subway map, although without that map’s dazzling complexity.  New Yorkers might have the best subway system in the world, tying together diverse communities and running at all hours.  But we do not have the best map.