Why redesign the subway map? Is the official one really that terrible?
Artemy Lebedev: We’ve decided to redesign the map because the official map didn’t show any symptoms of getting better. I call it “explosion of a bicycle chain factory.” That describes it perfectly. What sort of research did you do? Were you consulting other subway maps? If so, which ones? London is classic, NY is nice, Tokyo is nightmare. We’ve had them all. Moscow is really circle-based, so we have our own identity which we needed to preserve. The map took nearly four years to design! Why so long? Actually, it took us about a month to design it. We spent four years on redesigning. We were coming with some ideas, tried to live with them, then went ahead. We didn’t want any short-term attention (anyone designing new Moscow subway map would gain short-term attention). We needed something that could be The Map for the next decade. How are you going about getting the map officially adopted? We will make it as widespread as possible first. We have had similar experience with promoting the r
