Have you ever looked at the color of the Orange Line? Like, really looked at it?
This was way too much fun. cc @transitmap pic.twitter.com/QAcmOLD61c
— Ari Ofsevit (@ofsevit) March 21, 2017
For most transit systems, Ofsevit copied the exact color displayed on the agency’s official PDF map. In a few cases, he found records on the exact shades and hues intended to be used on the maps.
For example, the New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority offers exacting color swatches for all the system’s transit lines: They’re identified by hex code, Pantone color, and CMYK.)
The map is getting some love on social media — “My Twitter feed is pretty nerdy,” Ofsevit admitted — and enough people have expressed interest that the 32-year-old has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of wall posters.
But upon closer examination, the chart may also shed light on some important questions about the variations in hues across transit systems. For example, why does the Washington Metro’s orange look so similar to the yellow used on other subway maps?
This is the color of Metro’s Orange Line, at least according to Metro’s official PDF map on the website.
Orange-ish? Sure. But truly orange? That’s questionable.
An informal newsroom poll — i.e., the people who happen to sit within 15 feet of this reporter’s desk — demonstrated that there were mixed opinions. Each person was shown the color swatch on a computer screen, and asked to name the color. Their answers: “Gold.” “Burnt yellow.” “Marigold.”
“It’s not orange,” said one reporter — er, respondent. “It’s like a mustard.”
And compare that color with the yellow used on some other maps:
(For the record, neither of these examples are officially called “the Yellow line,” but they appear on maps in juxtaposition with another transit line represented by a color that’s much closer to orange.)
Then, compare the color of the Washington Metro’s Orange Line with the orange used on the the New York MTA’s B-D-F-M line:
Now that’s orange, amirite?
But there’s one staunch defender of the shade of orange used to represent the route between Vienna and New Carrollton: Lance Wyman, a world-renowned graphic designer, and the original creator of Metro’s official subway map.
“The orange and the red can actually appear very similar to each other on a subway map,” Wyman said in an interview. “So we tried to use colors to make sure that there was a strong difference between the red and the orange.”
Wyman said the Orange Line, along with the rest of the Metro’s rail lines, used to be a little darker on the original version of the map. More recently, the colors have been brightened slightly, Wyman said — which may have led to the Orange Line becoming slightly more gold.
But any quibbles over the shade of orange are simply arguments for argument’s sake, Wyman said, because the map is also marked with the initials of each line (“OL,” “RL,” “BL”) appearing at the terminus of each route. Those initials were designed to help people who are color-blind or have visual impairments — and they also clear up any potential confusion about whether the burnt-marigold-mustard-y line is actually orange or yellow.
Even for riders who are as well-versed in the map as Wyman, those identifications can come in handy. More than 15 year ago, Wyman was in D.C. attending a design conference and he was tasked with leading a group of people onto Metro. He got lost and led the group astray because he relied on an old map of Metro: The Orange Line had faded so much that he mistook it for the Red line.
“The end-line identification gets you away from the colors being a problem,” Wyman said. Beyond that, he’s satisfied with the current color scheme. “It works aesthetically. I think the map does have a very nice quality.”
(Also, a fun fact: When the Silver Line was close to completion, Wyman advocated for the route to be colored pink or light magenta, and known as “the Cherry Blossom line.” His idea was shot down.)
But Metro’s is not the only transit system in the country with an orange line that flirts with entirely different color families.
“Orange in one city does not mean orange in another,” said Ofsevit, the designer of the transit color chart. “The orange in Chicago would be the Red line in some other cities.”
Ofsevit said his detailed chart took several weeks to compile. The Cambridge, Mass. resident said he was inspired by new Twitter alerts recently rolled out by Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Each tweet includes a color-coordinated image indicating the particular train line that is affected by disruptions or delays.
The alerts work fine, Ofsevit said, but they are “graphically terrible.”
#MBTA #GreenLine: D branch: Moderate delays due to a disabled train at Reservoir: https://t.co/bRRDAtcldm pic.twitter.com/PtzqNz6a04
— MBTA (@MBTA) March 27, 2017
“I’m looking at this and I was like, ‘What’s wrong with it?’” Ofsevit recalled. The answer was simple. “The colors in the alert did not match the colors on the map. The Green line was a totally different green.”
The moment made him realize just how much he associates that particular shade of hunter green with Boston’s forked light-rail line. A shamrock green or a lime green might be fine for other transit systems, but it would hardly suffice to depict Boston’s Green Line.
He wondered if there was a visually appealing way to depict the different shades used by different transit systems across the country. And he got to work, plugging away for a few nights a week for multiple weeks, cataloging transit line swatches and organizing them in grids.
He’s also made a version of the chart representing transit agencies around the world. It’s a work in progress:
Once he lined everything up, Ofsevit noticed some other stark trends. Blue and green were by far the most popular colors. The reds, he noticed, were rarely “true red,” a color that might be considered too garish by some designers.
“There are some reds that are almost pink. Chicago has a red that is almost maroon,” Ofsevit said.
And brown and pink were the most rare, with some of the country’s more expansive transit agencies opting to use a second blue or green rather than opting for supposedly inferior colors.
“There’s not a lot of pink,” Ofsevit said. “A lot of agencies will go to a second or third green before they go to pink.”