wyliepoon
Senior Member
Link to article'Font' man to offer tours of ugly stops
Adam Huras
National Post
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The TTC once prioritized design in its subways: The signage had its own unique font, and attention was given to each station's distinctive tiles.
Proof that has changed can be found at Spadina station.
Renovations have left the station a mishmash. Its name is inscribed on walls in common font upper and lowercase letters, out of line with other station names. A new Walmer Road exit is signalled in grey, black and red striped tiles, bearing no esthetic relationship to the station's venerable brown and cream tiles.
Activist Joe Clark believes that with every renovation, the TTC has similarly made a total mess of signage in Toronto's underground.
"The only people who want the TTC preserved, and to make it a reason to visit Toronto, don't work there," he said.
Tomorrow, he will take a growing group of Torontonians who have become TTC design nerds on a tour of what went wrong as the transit system slipped into decline in recent years, in hopes of stopping more destruction to its historical architecture.
"What the TTC doesn't understand is that they have a unique appearance with the tiles and a unique typography," he said. "And then there's the issue of every other sign in the building. They use fake Helevetica, printed out with Corel Draw for Windows on plastic panels."
He has compiled a 55-page document on the subject, dedicated 28 years to studying typography, solicited for a job with the TTC to help fix it, and is now willing to give the public a tour of the esthetic atrocities. He said he can count six different fonts used within Toronto's four subway lines. It is an example, he says, of originality gone awry that subverts, ignores and destroys a typographic heritage that is 53 years old.
-Joe Clark's TTC Type & Tile Tour starts tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Victoria Park platform.
Adam Huras
National Post
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The TTC once prioritized design in its subways: The signage had its own unique font, and attention was given to each station's distinctive tiles.
Proof that has changed can be found at Spadina station.
Renovations have left the station a mishmash. Its name is inscribed on walls in common font upper and lowercase letters, out of line with other station names. A new Walmer Road exit is signalled in grey, black and red striped tiles, bearing no esthetic relationship to the station's venerable brown and cream tiles.
Activist Joe Clark believes that with every renovation, the TTC has similarly made a total mess of signage in Toronto's underground.
"The only people who want the TTC preserved, and to make it a reason to visit Toronto, don't work there," he said.
Tomorrow, he will take a growing group of Torontonians who have become TTC design nerds on a tour of what went wrong as the transit system slipped into decline in recent years, in hopes of stopping more destruction to its historical architecture.
"What the TTC doesn't understand is that they have a unique appearance with the tiles and a unique typography," he said. "And then there's the issue of every other sign in the building. They use fake Helevetica, printed out with Corel Draw for Windows on plastic panels."
He has compiled a 55-page document on the subject, dedicated 28 years to studying typography, solicited for a job with the TTC to help fix it, and is now willing to give the public a tour of the esthetic atrocities. He said he can count six different fonts used within Toronto's four subway lines. It is an example, he says, of originality gone awry that subverts, ignores and destroys a typographic heritage that is 53 years old.
-Joe Clark's TTC Type & Tile Tour starts tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Victoria Park platform.
