Not an easy task
Wyman faces a list of challenges. He has to add the new rail line to Dulles, include trains along the Red Line that end at Grosvenor, squeeze in a future split of the Blue Line and deal with some station names that have become long and cumbersome.
Lance Wyman, 73, of New York designed the Metrorail system's map more than 30 years ago. Under a deal worth up to $50,000, the graphic designer has been hired to reinvent it. He'll have challenges, including adding on the new line to Dulles International Airport and integrating other changes to the map, without ruining its clean, classic look. Many Metro riders and officials at the transit agency are watching closely. Wyman is well known for designing symbols and logos for other spots in the District, including the National Zoo, the old Convention Center, the Library of Congress, and at kiosks maps along the National Mall.
“It’s always easier when you have less to put on,” he said. “You want a distinctive look that works for people who live in the community and for someone who’s from China, speaks no English and is trying to find his way.”
Wyman has woken up in the middle of the night, fretting over aspects of the new design. What shade of silver should he use for the Dulles rail line — if it is officially named the Silver Line? How much space do you place between each station? Should station names be hyphenated or use slashes? And how do you fit all of the information and not crowd out the main icons, including the Capitol and the Washington Monument?
“They’re the nuclei of the whole map,” he said of the landmarks. “You start squeezing in more lines and information and you start to obliterate the quick orientation they give you.”
Wyman is reluctant to share his ideas for the new map. He says he needs to spend time riding Metro and see how his old map is being used. Once his ideas go out for public review, he said, they will go viral.
Metro officials expect to present Wyman’s new map design to the public this fall. The Blue Line split is proposed to take place next year, and the first phase of the new line to Dulles is expected to open in late 2013.
He knows there’s a chance for failure. He recalled how he once designed a logo for a pharmaceutical company and a visitor to his studio “thought it was a toilet seat,” Wyman said. He said he trashed the design and started over.
Wyman said he wants to make sure the Metro map is usable in every shape and form. The unfolded billfold pamphlet can’t be bigger than two $1 bills side by side. The map has to work on mobile devices and online, as well as in poster-size displays at Metro stations.
“The map has spirit,” he said. “It has to hang together like a good piece of music. It’s got life, a beat with colors and station stops. There’s a sense of rhythm. It has a solidity to it that’s unique to Washington. I don’t want to lose the good music.”
Mapping for Metro
The son of a commercial fisherman and a typist, Wyman was born in Newark. After graduating from the Pratt Institute in New York with a bachelor’s degree in industrial design, Wyman worked for General Motors in Michigan and later worked for well-known New York architect and designer George Nelson.
He served a six-year stint in the Army National Guard before hopping on a plane to Mexico City with his newlywed wife, Neila, and a business partner to enter a competition to design a logo for the 1968 Summer Olympics. They won and created a special logo for the Games, using “Mexico 68” as a shape with the Olympic rings.
Wyman spent 41 / 2 years in Mexico, where he designed a map for the Mexico City subway and the graphics for the 1970 World Cup. Steve Harding, a Houston designer who worked for Wyman on the Metro map in the 1970s, said Wyman’s work in Mexico “was groundbreaking because he used icons to create a picture language. . . . He was considered a pioneer in using icons in graphic design.”
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