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Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) was an Italian designer who worked in several areas, including packaging, housewares, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He worked within the modernism tradition, emphasizing simplicity by using basic geometry shapes. He co-founded Vignelli Associates with his wife, Lella Vignelli.
Between 1957 and 1960, Vignelli first came to America on a fellowship. He returned to New York in 1966 to co-found the New York branch of Unimark International. The firm went on to design corporate identities, such as the American Airlines logo in 1967 which was in use until 2013.
During his tenure at Unimark, Vignelli designed the signage for the New York City Subway. His design for the New York MTA subway map introduced in 1972 was criticized for sacrificing geographical accuracy for clarity.
Vignelli was brought on board to help create the visual identity for the Washington Metro. Though he was instrumental to the system's aesthetic, the map itself was designed by Lance Wyman and Bill Cannan. Vignelli created the signage and wayfinding system and suggested it be named "Metro" like many other capital city subways instead of its original name, which was a mishmash of various states and transportation groups.
In 1971, Vignelli resigned from Unimark, in part because he felt the design vision which he supported became diluted as the company diversified and increasingly focused on marketing. Soon after, Massimo and his wife Lella Vignelli founded Vignelli Associates. By 1977, Unimark had filed for bankruptcy.
Vignelli worked with filmmaker Gary Hustwit on the documentary Helvetica, about the Helvetica. Vignelli also updated his 1972 New York City Subway map for an online-only version implemented in 2011 and described it as a 'diagram', not a map, to reflect its abstract design without surface-level features such as streets and parks.
The Vignellis equipped their own home with tables, chairs, lamps, and other items of their design.Heller, Steven, Massimo Vignelli, New York Times Magazine, December 28, 2014, p.58
Vignelli died on May 27, 2014, at the age of 83 in New York City.
Vignelli participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007, and published Vignelli: From A to Z, a book of essays describing the principles and concepts behind what he called "all good design". It is alphabetically organized by topic, roughly approximating a similar course he taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Vignelli's designs were famous for following a minimal aesthetic and a narrow range of that Vignelli considered to be perfect in their genre, including Akzidenz-Grotesk, Bodoni, Helvetica, Garamond No. 3, Futura, Times New Roman, and Century Expanded. In his 1991 book, The Vignelli Canon he implored readers to consider that "In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest."The Masters Series: Massimo Vignelli, February 22 to March 8, 1991; poster advertisement, reproduced in The Vignelli Canon, pg29 (2010)
In January 2009, Vignelli released The Vignelli Canon for free as an e-book. An expanded version was printed in September 2010. In the introduction, Vignelli writes, "I thought that it might be useful to pass some of my professional knowledge around, with the hope of improving young design skills. Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best."
Vignelli worked with the National Park Service and the design staff at the Harpers Ferry Center in the creation of the "Unigrid System." The system has been used since 1977 in the creation of park brochures in all national parks locations.
The TA responded by creating the role of Director of Public Information and Community Relations and hired former newspaper reporter Len Ingalls as its Chief of Publicity. In his later years, Vignelli praised Ingalls for being a very good client, which Vignelli often said was the most important factor in the success of a design project. Ingalls began an overhaul of both signage and the subway map. Mildred Constantine, curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is credited with putting Ingalls in touch with Vignelli, who was then working at Unimark International's New York office. In the Spring of 1966, the TA engaged Unimark to redesign the subway signage and review the ongoing changes to the map. Vignelli teamed up with Bob Noorda, another Unimark co-founder, to create a system of signage that the TA adopted and that endures in every New York subway station today. However, the TA did not follow up on Vignelli's preliminary study of the map as the agency was already at the testing stage of its map design.Peter Blake, "Get Off at N1,1,2,3,7,SS,QB,RR,NX,EE – The Crossroads of the World", New York magazine, April 8, 1968NYCTA Press Release, November 16, 1967
The design was developed by Unimark's Joan Charysyn under Vignelli's design direction. In April 1971, Vignelli left Unimark to set up Vignelli Associates. By this time, the map was almost complete but was subject to corrections and modifications requested by Raleigh D'Adamo, who was now Head of the Office of Inspection and Review at the MTA. The changes were carried out by Charysyn, who also oversaw the printing of the map. The map was unveiled by Ronan on August 4, 1972, at a ceremony in the 57th Street and Sixth Avenue station.
After handing the map design over to MTA in 1972, Unimark and Vignelli had no further control over the project. Six further editions with extensive changes were produced between 1973 and 1978. In 1974, Ronan was replaced by David Yunich as MTA chairman. Yunich was a former executive at Macy's department store, and explicitly intended to "sell" the subway to riders. In 1975, he recruited his former Macy's colleague Fred Wilkinson to form the Subway Map Committee with a mandate to design a map to replace Vignelli's. The next year John Tauranac was made chair of the committee, which concluded in June 1979 with the launch of a more geographically-accurate map using a trunk-based color scheme designed by Michael Hertz Associates.Hogarty, Dave. "Michael Hertz, Designer of the NYC Subway Map," Gothamist (AUG. 3, 2007). The Hertz map replaced the Vignelli map for the next 46 years until the MTA released a variant of the Vignelli map in 2025.
In 2011, the MTA began to look at ways of displaying service disruptions due to weekend engineering works in a visual format. They invited Vignelli to develop a digital version of the 2008 map. It was released under the title of "The Weekender" on the MTA website on September 16, 2011. Since then it has undergone several revisions but is still in use today with weekly updates of service changes.
Private cars were not allowed to park at the stadium, so the use of public transportation was considerable. With 400,000 visitors expected to the area and 80,000 attendees expected at the game itself, the MTA worked with New Jersey Transit (NJT), Amtrak, and NY Waterway to produce a special-purpose Regional Transit Map. The map brought in several innovations:
Artistry
Vignelli worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. His clients at Vignelli Associates included companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale's, and American Airlines. His former employee Michael Bierut wrote that "it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition around. To get to the office, I rode in a subway with Vignelli-designed signage, shared the sidewalk with people holding Vignelli-designed Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, walked by St. Peter’s Church with its Vignelli-designed pipe organ visible through the window. At Vignelli Associates, at 23 years old, I felt I was at the center of the universe."
New York City Subway map
In August 1972, Vignelli's diagrammatic design for the New York City Subway map appeared on the walls of subway stations and became a landmark in Modernism information design. Vignelli regarded the map as one of his finest creations.
Origin of the map
The origins of the map lie in the problems of the previous decade. In the mid-1960s New York City Transit Authority (TA) was facing unprecedented difficulties in delivering information to its riders due to:
The 1970s Vignelli map
The TA's new map, released in 1967, used Raleigh D'Adamo's principle of color-coding for the first time, but it suffered from what Vignelli called "fragmentation" and was not well received. The following year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was created to centralize operations of other New York City-area transit systems. Dr. William J. Ronan was named as chair and wanted to create a modern brand image for the new entity. At the time, Unimark's signage project was nearly finished, having created the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual. Vignelli approached Ronan with a mock-up showing his concept of a map for lower Manhattan.Peter B. Lloyd, "Vignelli: Transit Maps" (RIT Press, 2012) p. 47 Ronan approved it, and in July 1970, the TA awarded Unimark a contract to design a new map for the system.
The 2000s Vignelli map
At the end of 2007, Mark Rozzo, an editor at Men's Vogue magazine, invited Vignelli to submit a commemorative edition of his map for inclusion in a 'design classics' edition of the magazine. The team at Vignelli Associates welcomed the invitation, as they had been considering how to re-design the map for some time. Massimo Vignelli, Yoshiki Waterhouse, and Beatriz Cifuentes worked together to build a new, up-to-date map from scratch. Besides the general principle of a systematic and minimalist design, they specifically set out to create a map that would preserve spatial relations between stations. For example, if one station is east of another station above ground, those locations must be reflected on the map, alleviating one of the most persistent criticisms of the 1972 map. Their wholly new map was released in the May 2008 edition of Men's Vogue. The magazine sold signed prints of the new map for $300 to benefit charity. All 500 signed prints were sold within hours of hitting the stands on May 1, 2008.
Super Bowl map
The last map in which Vignelli was involved was a special transit map, designed by Yoshiki Waterhouse at Vignelli Associates, for Super Bowl XLVIII. It was commissioned by the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Committee for the February 2, 2014 match at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It was the first Super Bowl played outdoors in a cold-weather city.
SuperWarmRed
The Vignelli discipline of mapmaking is continued by Waterhouse and Cifuentes at SuperWarmRed Designs, which they founded in December 2014. Prints of the 2012 edition of the subway map as used in the MTA Weekender site can be obtained through SuperWarmRed.
Vignelli Center for Design Studies
In 2008, Massimo and Lella Vignelli agreed to donate the entire archive of their design work to the Rochester Institute of Technology. The archive is housed in a building designed by Lella and Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Center For Design Studies. The building, which opened in September 2010, includes exhibition spaces, classrooms, and offices.
Awards
Vignelli was given the following awards and honorary doctorates:
Publications
(1990). 9780847811403, Rizzoli. ISBN 9780847811403
(2025). 9781920744526, Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd. ISBN 9781920744526
(2025). 9781864701760, Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd. ISBN 9781864701760
(2025). 9783037782255, Lars Müller. ISBN 9783037782255
(2025). 9789197882743, Hall of Femmes. ISBN 9789197882743
(2025). 9781939125071, RIT Press. ISBN 9781939125071
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