Ways to Design the Letter 'M' | Hacker News Reader

Ways to Design the Letter 'M'

citylab.com

71 pointsqzervaas65 comments

I have created a supplementary figure.

Thank you.

Am I being to harsh in accusing The Atlantic/CityLab from clearly not putting the reader first when they created this article?

Aha, the solutions. Now I have a Christmas quiz for a bunch of graphic design students. Excellent.

Liverpool: many of us still call it Merseyrail despite the attempts at rebranding.

Birmingham-Wolverhampton has a Metro as well which I could not see in a quick scan. Officially called Midland Metro

http://nxbus.co.uk/the-metro/

The new extension into the centre of Birmingham will be quite cosmopolitan when it actually gets finished.

Merseyrail is still called that, this article is more to do with using an "M" symbol rather than the name itself.

Midland Metro uses an "n" in common with other Network West Midlands stuff, so doesn't qualify for this chart. http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/

OK, your list, your choice (shrugs).

[Just imagine what would have happened if it was Chester that became economically important 150 years ago rather than Liverpool? Deesiderail, or DRail]

FWIW, I think the one marked "Genoa" looks the same in all of italy.

EDIT: ok, "most" of it.

Isn't the fascinating thing here that "metro" has become the universal moniker for urban mass transit? Even in places that speak a language unrelated to Latin.

Germany has the U-bahn and S-bahn, Sweden the T-bana. And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground.

Universal? I don't think "metro" sees use in the US for any mass-transit related purpose, and I'd be surprised to see it used for buses anywhere.

Los Angeles: LA Metro

Washington D.C.: Washington Metro

Miami: Metrorail

Fair enough. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of words rather than names. "Detroit Metro Airport" is a use of metro in relation to mass transit, too, but I suspect not what whoopdedo was talking about.

I hear the word "Metro" used as a generic term for transit systems often. I think it reflects the variety of transportation options usually included in a "Metro" system: subway, elevated trains, street cars, buses, etc.

> And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground.

It's never called the Metro here. The Metro is a free newspaper.

It's a weird sort of universality that excludes the oldest and biggest mass transit systems, the London Underground and the New York Subway.

I've heard people call the New York system the metro.

New York's subway stations are stilled marked on the street by a big "M", and you'll occasionally hear people say "metro," but "subway" is much more common -- it is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, though.

In Chicago, which has another pretty old mass transit system, people call it the "el," even the parts that aren't elevated (i.e., the subway, though you'll hear "subway," too). Oddly, the commuter rail between Chicago and suburbs is the "Metra".

Does the New York Subway have a logo? I know the MTA does (it's kinda cool) but most New York subway street signs just have little roundels indicating the various lines through the station.

http://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/eti...

Maybe the Subway doesn't have its own logo.

The line that started it all is the Metropolitan Line in London.

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/...

Nobody in London refers to the Underground as the "Metro". It is, of course, The Tube.

some people do. there is also a Metro newspaper free for all commuters

I guess some tourists do, but in my anecdotal experience they are in the vast minority. I can't recall ever having heard someone refer to the Tube as the 'Metro' in 15 years of living in London.

I think the name of the Metro newspaper may refer more to 'Metropolitan', as it is published in many different cities throughout the UK. Also, they probably would not have been allowed to publish a newspaper called 'The Tube' because of copyright.

Even with Londoners, I commonly hear "Metro" used as the generic term for a underground mass transit system, as opposed to "subway".

Not sure why downvotes, one cannot disagree? I know people calling it metro, they live in London, that's my experience and a reply to someone saying "nobody in London".

I mentioned it as an outlier. London, Glasgow, Germany, and Sweden were the ones I found that don't call it metro.

Don't worry the German language has lot's of Ms to throw around, so we had to start stacking them:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_18...

In Hong Kong, it is commonly referred to as the MTR (the company that operates it).

In Boston it is also the T (properly stylized as T⃝ if you have a good Unicode renderer). It doesn't stand for anything (it's run by the MBTA, and it's not ever called anything but "the T"), though Wikipedia tells me the logo is modeled after that of Stockholm's.

I always thought it stood for Transit

> Let’s just hope the fine folks at the Kiev metro, with their underwear logo design, weren’t going for meaningful symbolism.

They actually were going for meaningful symbolism, just not about underwear :) Green diamonds at the bottom are simplified chestnut tree leaves. Chestnut is a symbol of Kyiv.

> The universal symbol for a city’s Metro system is a big “M.”

Except in Germany, where it's a big “U” (for U-Bahn).

Or in Norway and Sweden where it is a "T"

Or any other city where they don't call it a metro

Exactly. In Argentina it's a "Subte", in Japan it's "Chikatetsu".

However, Metro seems to be the most popular name (it's used in Madrid and Sao Paulo too).

Except in Tokyo it is called the Tokyo Metro. The logo is even in the article.

I was misled by (the spanish language) Wikipedia :) , you're right, it talks about the heart shape and everything.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(sistema_de_transporte)#...

I can personally confirm that in Buenos Aires it's called Subte and the word Metro is used nowhere in Argentina or Uruguay.

Tokyo has both a metro and a subway (chikatetsu literally means "underground railway"). Nagoya has a subway, and the logo is a kind of tunnel.

Pet peeve: "Xian" is an entirely different thing from "Xi'an", which is the correct orthography for the city referred to in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an

The chinese don't worry too much about pinyin. Arguably the "correct" orthography would be 西安.

How do you feel about 陕西?

What the Chinese think about pinyin is not relevant, nor is Chinese-language orthography. We are clearly communicating in English, and in English the correct orthography for the city in question is "Xi'an". This is important because "Xian" is an entirely unrelated, distinct syllable.

Language is a tool for communication. In English "Xian" unambiguously refers to the city in question (e.g. searching for it will take you to the correct page), unless you're saying there's some other "Xian" it would be confused with?

(English orthography has always been ambiguous; accents are conventionally optional in English even when their absence is misleading regarding pronunciation, e.g. "cafe")

There's a Xian County [1].

I don't think anyone would accept "Newyork", even though a Google search goes to the correct place — hardly a good measure of ambiguity. The pronunciation is different, so it could be confused with "Newark" with some accents.

English has enough ambiguity without introducing more, especially from carelessness or laziness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_County

Spaces are much less optional than accents. Very few object to "Montreal" or "San Jose" (indeed those have become the accepted English spellings at this point).

To add a counterpoint: The German cities Münster and Munster are distinct. Just leaving the diacritics away confuses everybody (the correct way of spelling the former when there is no "ü" available is Muenster).

An apostrophe is not an "accent".

The "'" in "Xi'an" is not an English apostrophe (it doesn't indicate an omitted letter or a possessive); it's an accent-like diacritic.

Technically it's not a diacritic, either; it doesn't attach to any letter. It's a syllable boundary, like the hyphens in Wade-Giles transcription ("Hsi-an" or "Tse-tung").

> In English "Xian" unambiguously refers to the city in question

That's just the thing: It does not.

It was pretty unambiguous to me.

That is because you happen to be ignorant of all but the most notable thing that could be either "xi'an" or "xian". Others are not limited by the extent of your knowledge.

Virtually 100% of English speakers are (in fact, I'd go so far as to say nearly 100% of english speakers are ignorant of all the notable things that might be xian or xi'an). Of the remainder, none will be confused (your worry is ambiguity, right?) by the sort of reference we see here.

I asked your opinion of 陕西 for a reason.

  > in English the correct orthography for the city in question is "Xi'an"

Why? In English orthography, initial ‘x’ is /z/ an an apostrophe marks omission in a contraction. Neither seems to be the case here.

Because in Chinese morphology "xi'an" is two distinct syllables, while "xian" is a single syllable. In Hanyu Pinyin (the modern Chinese transliteration standard) this distinction is made with an apostrophe. What English "usually" does with the apostrophe is irrelevant.

"Xi'an" and "xian" must be able to be distinguished in English because they refer to separate things. If you have a problem with using an apostrophe for this, take it up with the standards body that decided on Hanyu Pinyin.

> "Xi'an" and "xian" must be able to be distinguished in English because they refer to separate things.

What ridiculous nonsense. You mean like how Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson must be able to be distinguished in English because they refer to separate things? Oh, whoops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Walk_of_Fame#Names_i...

Maybe you mean how Springfield and Springfield must be able to be distinguished in English because they refer to separate things.

Maybe you mean that English must distinguish between strings of one syllable and strings of two. Unfortunately for you, that's still nonsense. Consider this variation on a classic example sentence: "I spent the evening evening out a ripple in the rug."

Well, OK; my question was based on your “pinyin is not relevant”; if it's pinyin or pseudo-pinyin then it has its own rules, just like any other non-English language that uses roman letters, and English orthography is irrelevant. Then writing ‘Xi'an’ is just an affectation like writing ‘Roma’ and ‘Wien’ in place of ‘Rome’ and ‘Vienna’.

I said "What the Chinese think about pinyin is not relevant" in response to thaumasiotes's comment that "The chinese don't worry too much about pinyin." Clearly thaumasiotes is talking about your average Chinese-speaking man-on-the-street, and I think it's pretty clear that I meant that such a person's opinion is not relevant. Of course the Hanyu Pinyin standard is relevant.

Why is the Hanyu Pinyin standard relevant? It is not the source of official English orthography for Chinese names (and hey, if it was, xi'an would be just as wrong as xian!). I'll ask you for the third time what you think of 陕西.

"To gain insight into why a transit agency would bother to put so much effort into its M logo, we turned to whiz graphic designer Michael Bierut of Pentagram. His initial response: maybe they shouldn’t."

That's a weird statement from a designer. I myself find it great that they care about it. These symbols become part of the city's identity, I'd say that's pretty important.

> These symbols become part of the city's identity, I'd say that's pretty important.

Vastly more important is the proper purpose of the signage. It signals to someone unfamiliar with the surroundings there is an underground train station here. The targeted persons who require this signage and are helped most by it are predominantly not residents of the city and therefore have little reason to feel identity or affiliation.

Much like regulated traffic signs, it is better that cities do not design their own unique logos, but use a standardised one. See the paragraph on http://mic-ro.com/metro/metrologos.html starting with "Some logos are ubiquitous, at least nationwide" for places where cooperation won out over individuality.

> Several M’s have wings, Prague and Bucharest among them [...]

Considering how the alternative Prague Metro 'M' looks[1], I'm pretty sure it's meant to be an arrow.

[1] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3024/2283474963_f84830eb16.jpg

This is how one designs the letter M: http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/metro/logo/process/

As a Londoner, today I learned what all those big Ms I've seen in foreign cities mean.

It says something that I use the metro in my city (Moscow) everyday and I couldn't pick which one of the logos is supposed to be the logo of Moscow Metro. I was thinking row 3, 4th from the left, but nope.

It's a pointy slab serif M [1], though there are numerous variations as the "brand management" wasn't exactly the thing back in 1930s... or 40s, or even 80s.

[1] http://imgur.com/Q7rHRlx

I wonder if the Nanjing logo has any connection to "市".

Where's McDonald's logo?

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