Colour Me Impressed: the New "old" Tile at St. Andrew Station

[unimaginative2]

I had a look last night and I'm quite impressed. It's definitely an enormous improvement. I just hope they keep it clean. I was intrigued to see that the vitrolite panels still seem to be underneath.

 

[SP!RE]

The TTC needs to learn to stop worrying about big redevelopments and recladding projects in our stations, and actually spend time MAINTAINING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS.

Even washing down the tiles... there's a concept. Otherwise, give St. Andrew and Museum stations another 10 years and they will look like utter crap all over again.

I love you, TTC, but... that is all.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Who knew there was a St. Andre West station. Seriously TTC, hire some competent designers who have at least completed grade 8 art. If it wasn't for that, i'd be pretty happy with the new panels.

i can't stop noticing it now!

 

[Komiksulo]

Nope.

Well, colour me corrected! I thought maybe there might have been some lingering Britishness at the TTC in the sixties.

 

[Northern Light]

The TTC needs to learn to stop worrying about big redevelopments and recladding projects in our stations, and actually spend time MAINTAINING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS.

Even washing down the tiles... there's a concept. Otherwise, give St. Andrew and Museum stations another 10 years and they will look like utter crap all over again.

I love you, TTC, but... that is all.

I'm still hoping someone will tell me why we can't have my station wash subway car? I really like the idea, if its impractical I'd like to know why.

I figure it can have auto-brushes, like a carwash that scrub the trackside tiles and it can have highones that do the ceilings. Wouldn't that be efficient?

The brushes retract in for tunnel travel (just enough not to get covered in dirt.

***

I heard mention of an issue w/power-washing because of the stuff discharging into the storm-sewer. How about we just make the connection to the Sanitary?

***

Oh, and yes, the old tiles are underneath at most TTC Stations, this was a favourite money saver of the Commission in year's gone by. That's also why they put those little metal bars about 1/2 way up a few years ago at Dundas and St. Clair and several other stations, because they method of adhesion was so crappy that there was a risk the 'new wall' falling away from the old one en masse.

 

[adma]

You can see a period here, too

 

[UD2]

we all know that in 10 years MUSUEM station will look like utter garbage.

The materials used on the statues is rough, and therefore, will trap brake dust like nothing else.

 

[drum118]

we all know that in 10 years MUSUEM station will look like utter garbage.

The materials used on the statues is rough, and therefore, will trap brake dust like nothing else.

This is after 14 months

 

[Jonny5]

I'm still hoping someone will tell me why we can't have my station wash subway car? I really like the idea, if its impractical I'd like to know why.

Outside Davisville satation I often see a big machine parked on the rails that has a big sign on the side that says "The Clean Machine" with a cartoon scrubbing brush. Does anyone know what this machine does?

 

[syn]

I'm extremely happy that they have returned to the classic font but they just need to fix that kerning between the E and W. As a designer myself, that item should have stood out for anyone in their design department. The only problem is that the design dept of the TTC is probably a bunch of non-designers using corel draw.

Is that ceiling panel piece the new ceiling treatment? I wonder if they are going to be painting the roof black to help hide the brake dust.

Yes it did stand out. I've used CorelDraw before though and it's actually a pretty good program!

Overall, a definite improvement...though I don't think they're as great as everyone else seems to.

 

[Jayomatic]

I've used CorelDraw before though and it's actually a pretty good program!

Yeah, it's not a bad program. I think its the first program I ever used to do some graphics. But I guess if you hand someone the tools without knowing how to use them, it doesn't really matter what program they used. I just hope they are able to wash them down frequently.

 

[joeclark]

The EW pair is not supposed to have the same spacing as the other characters.

Which is, incidentally, a third of an em. I measured it.

I think it's called kerning.

It is in this case because we’re talking about two adjacent characters. Spacing adjustments across words or lines, or just across three characters or more, are called tracking.

Anyway, vertical-sided + diagonal-sided caps are hard to space well. Typophile just had a question this week about faces that look good with A and I adjacent. So this is not an easy problem. But you can see from the photographs that the actual motivating factor is the TTC’s desire to keep letters away from the edges of tiles (not true in the old stations – letters zoom right past tile borders). That’s what is causing the extra space here.

 

[T-Squared]

saw some of the old(est?) tiles behind the partially removed panels:

 

[nfitz]

and what about the period after 'ST'?

They dropped the period in ST GEORGE when they redid some of that signage a few years ago. Also the period has been dropped in all the new street signs; so dropping the period at ST ANDREW is consistent with that ... though it seems unreal that there was actually co-ordination involved ...

 

[Dan416]

They dropped the period in ST GEORGE when they redid some of that signage a few years ago. Also the period has been dropped in all the new street signs; so dropping the period at ST ANDREW is consistent with that ... though it seems unreal that there was actually co-ordination involved ...

Maybe Toronto is embracing its British roots?

... More likely they're saving money by dropping the period.