
Ways to Design the Letter 'M' - qzervaas
http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/06/77-ways-to-design-the-letter-m-in-your-metro-logo/395045/
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dstyrb
I have created a supplementary figure.

[http://imgur.com/NG5cWmJ](http://imgur.com/NG5cWmJ)

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keithpeter
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/](http://nxbus.co.uk/the-metro/)

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

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fredoralive
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/](http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/)

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keithpeter
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]

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whoopdedo
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.

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

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

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blowski
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.

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

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Evgeniuz
> 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.

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mpitt
> 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).

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

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

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GFischer
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).

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

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GFischer
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)#...](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_\(sistema_de_transporte\)#Terminolog.C3.ADa)

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

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amake
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an)

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

How do you feel about 陕西?

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amake
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.

~~~
lmm
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")

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Symbiote
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_County)

~~~
lmm
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).

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GFK_of_xmaspast
An apostrophe is not an "accent".

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lmm
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.

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thaumasiotes
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").

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lentil_soup
"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.

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bmn_
> 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](http://mic-
ro.com/metro/metrologos.html) starting with "Some logos are ubiquitous, at
least nationwide" for places where cooperation won out over individuality.

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eCa
> 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](https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3024/2283474963_f84830eb16.jpg)

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moscowmetro
This is how one designs the letter M:
[http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/metro/logo/process/](http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/metro/logo/process/)

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

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Grue3
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.

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huhtenberg
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](http://imgur.com/Q7rHRlx)

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

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CodeSheikh
Where's McDonald's logo?

