A gringo from New Jersey and the Mexico City subway
The Mexico City subway system is the second largest in the Americas, second only to New York. It handles 4.5 million users per day, with 12 lines serving 95 stations over 141 miles. It is also a cultural treasury, featuring historical and literary murals as musicians play classical, ranchera and traditional music in the tunnels. The Mexican subway system is the great leveler, carrying doctors and lawyers as well as housemaids and store clerks to work each day.
Because it is so vast and complex, and serves speakers of indigenous and foreign languages, planners sought to update the system with pictographs and colors that would not only convey various stations and exits, but also Mexican culture and history. The project director, Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, who designed the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, chose a young graphic designer by the name of Lance Wyman to do the job back in 1970.
Born in New Jersey, Wyman worked in a factory as he pursued a college education. He had some design experience in the corporate field, and in late 1966 met Ramirez Vazquez, who was then in charge of planning the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Wyman, only 29 at the time, was offered the chance to submit some logo designs and signs for the event. Nearly broke, he took on the task. (He could only afford a one-way ticket for him and his wife to Mexico City and a cheap shared apartment with a friend.) He spent weeks studying Huichol fabric designs and Toltec sculptures and reading up on Mexican history, art and architecture before even attempting his sketches.
The young designer’s dedication impressed the senior architect. He accompanied him to the Museum of Anthropology and showed him more possibilities. Ultimately, the Olympic Committee adopted Wyman’s designs, which incorporated the Olympic rings with ‘68, the year of the event.
The design is now iconic, found on everything from stationery to murals, coffee cups to stamps, commemorating the Olympics and also that year’s historic student uprising, which was violently suppressed by the government.
Two years later, in 1970, Ramirez Vazquez contracted Wyman to help revamp the subway system. Wyman spent months traveling the line and planning each stop along the way. He connected the name of each station with something significant in the area. Thus, a stop in the historic center resulted in the use of the image of a cannon on display in a library just above ground. Another stop, showing an Aztec ruin, was below an area excavated when the subway tunnel was dug years earlier. Another shows a mammoth, because one was found when digging the tunnel at that site. For those who are curious to know more, the transport service tweets an explanation of a chosen pictograph each day.
The system of icons is accessible to non-Spanish speakers, but also visually connects local riders with their past, and displays Mexican culture to visitors. Each stop and station reflects Mexican identity, Mexican culture or Mexican history. Each colorful and welcoming panel gives the underground stations a sense of warmth and richness for tourists and daily commuters alike.