Massimo Vignelli was graphic and product designer responsible for many iconic designs such as graphics and products for many “Italian and European companies including Olivetti, Penguin Books, Piccolo Teatro, Pirelli, Poltronova, Triennale, the Venice Biennale, and Xerox”[1] however one of his most famous designs was of the New York city train map which has elements which are still being used till today and can be seen even permeating into other cultures, Melbourne’s very own train and tram map can be seen to drawn heavy similarities and inspirations from Vignelli’s maps.

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Vigelli’s design is now iconic among transportation maps, using the minimalist approach to designing the map while still retaining the spacial relativity of land marks and stations, the clean, simple and easy to understand design has allowed for easy planning as positions can be found quickly and effectively.

Massimo Vignelli was a firm believer of modernist principals his designs leaning upon the ideas of simplicity and geometric design, which can be seen in many of his works whether they be knives, maps or graphics he was of the leaders in spreading the ideas of mondernist design[2]. He is partially responsible for popularizing simple and clear typefaces, such as Helvetica which we can see being used both in his subway map design and many of his other designs use similar styles of typeface such as the bloomingdales bag which he designed.[3]

Criticism

As a person who introduced modernist elements to maps his designs are not without those who are opposed to them, in fact when the subway map was first introduced it was met with harsh resistance with people struggling with the idea of the slightly wonky geography and gray and tan blocks representing parks and bodies of water. Vignelli obviously refuted those claims ” Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square,” Mr. Vignelli said the other day, sitting at a green marble table in his studio on East 67th Street. “Of course I know the park is green, and not gray. Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period. The only thing you are interested in is the spaghetti.” [4]. However in the end the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) eventually caved to the demands of those against the map and 7 years after it’s release was replaced by a new design by Tauranac which kept the colored lines and dotted stations but returned the lines to their “spaghetti state” which Vignelli comments
“Look what these barbarians have done,” he said as he examined his copy of the current map. “All these curves, all this whispering-in-the-ear of balloons. It’s half-naturalist and half-abstract. It’s a mongrel.”

If i were to give my opinion, i would much rather prefer Vigelli’s design over Tauranac partially due to the fact that i am used to melbourne’s transport map, and also i am someone who enjoys the idea of form follows function and like the idea where maps are used to get from point A to B. However i can also see why his proposal was turned down when you look at the two maps and compare them you can see that there is large discrepancies in the placement of land marks, one of the most glaring examples of this is central park which has been squashed into a square not only falsely depicting it but also skewing the distance between landmarks where people who are unfamiliar with the city could be confused by the layout and get misled, this is due the fact that the map relies upon the users knowing the places where they are going meaning that people visiting new areas and tourist could be disorientated by this map.

[1] http://www.designculture.it/interview/massimo-vignelli.html#start
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/business/massimo-vignelli-a-modernist-graphic-designer-dies-at-83.html
[3] http://www.valcasey.com/webdesign/typ.html
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/nyregion/thecity/03maps.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0&module=inline

With the current day mass medias there are may “free” online services which can be used how do these “free” services gain a revenue and keep up their services? Sponsorship, sponsorship or advertising is not a new thing when the arts and entertainment industry is involved, dating all the way back to the medieval times were patrons and sponsors to the arts who would provide support for artists and creators in their endeavors whether that being theater, painting and so on. In modern society a huge amount of entertainment and art has entered the digital realm, this has made sponsorship easier than ever to acquire and to give out opening a entirely new world of ways to sponsor as well. However no one likes to see ads pop-up on their screen and sometime the ads can be for companies which are not entirely ethical, which raises the question should creates turn down sponsorship because the sponsor is working unethically? Currently in the MUMA gallery there is a piece named Fossil fuels + the Arts (2019), interactive network map, courtesy of A Centre for Everything by
Gabrielle de Vietri and Will Foster [1] which explores the connections of modern Australian art galleries and the big mining operations and companies and links them via gigantic network displaying all the intermediaries and associations.

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A interactive audio section goes into further detail and empathizes how closely coal mining is interlinked with our national art galleries and how these galleries are using the good will these organisations garner as a shield from complaints about their practices.

Via the lines in the creating a entangled, hard to follow web of points and paths it shows just how closely entwined the major art galleries are with support from the coal industry, using larger dots to draw attention to hubs of connections such as Wesfarmers or Rio Tinto also further shows just how much of an influence these companies have. This piece calls the viewers to action both as a piece being displayed at a gallery in a art and design focused university area, calling for those students to say no to displaying art in galleries backed by those organisations as well as beckoning galleries themselves to extricate themselves from their relations with these industries.

On a smaller scale the same can be seen online with popular sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitch as a few examples in all of the listed sites ads are unavoidable (unless you have add-ons to avoid them) showing ads during at the beginning and even during use, Twitch is an interesting case in this as while there is a compulsory ad when a viewer joins a live-stream further ads are up to the creator on when to display them which one creator Disguised Toast has described as a “Golden Goose”, squeeze it and it lays an egg but squeeze it too much and there are consequences [2], further on in the video Disguised Toast talks about how he would pick and choose which games he would let sponsor him, choosing between games which provided him varying amounts of money, some games which may of offered him more money however were badly made cash grab and a boring experience were turned down by him because as a person who can influence his viewer what he plays can impress upon the viewers and if he praises the game (which a lot of the time he is contractually obligated to do when he accepts a sponsorship) it would cause the viewers to spend money or time in something which they may not enjoy. While not as malignant as the coal industry they still use the same idea where they use a respected or well liked entity to promote their unethical operations.

So that brings us to the question should creators, artists, people of influence accept sponsorship? In my view sponsorship is like food it is what feeds the creators and is necessary to some degree for then to survive and keep on creating. However there is junk food, easy, lucrative and maybe a bit greasy. This is what i feel that creators should avoid and while maybe hard to part from junk food if you have lived your life consuming it, (much like how the galleries themselves we founded and have lived upon the funding by the large coal mining companies) makes it very hard to part form it.

[1] http://www.acentreforeverything.com/maps-of-gratitude

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5P_n5njCQ