Michael Bierut: The genius of the London Tube Map
Michael Bierut: El genio del plano del metro de Londres
Michael Bierut is a partner in the New York office of Pentagram, a founder of Design Observer and a teacher at Yale School of Art and Yale School of Management. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
in some ways, is a history of maps:
de alguna forma una historia de mapas:
el mundo a nuestro alrededor?
the world around us?
because it really isn't a map at all.
porque, en realidad, no es un mapa.
the London Tube Map]
del plano del metro de Londres]
came together in 1908,
independent railways merged
ocho vías férreas independientes
para representar ese sistema
cuerpos de agua, árboles y parques.
bodies of water, trees and parks --
al centro del mapa,
at the center of the map,
that couldn't even fit on the map.
que ni cabían en el mapa.
preciso geográficamente,
but maybe not so useful.
de ingeniería, de 29 años,
engineering draftsman
interrumpidamente
for the London Underground.
que viaja en trenes subterráneos
riding underground in trains
sobre el nivel de la tierra.
what's happening aboveground.
from station to station --
a estación, nada más:
no la geografía.
not the geography.
mess of spaghetti,
o de 45 grados.
or they're 45 degrees.
de manera uniforme,
corresponda al color de la línea
correspond to the color of the line,
ya realmente no es un mapa.
so that it's not really a map anymore.
no son alambres que conducen electrones,
isn't wires conducting electrons,
conducting people from place to place.
to give Harry Beck's map a try.
al mapa de Harry Beck.
of a thousand of these maps, pocket-size.
de estos planos de tamaño de bolsillo.
se convirtió en la plantilla
Sídney, Washington, D.C...
Sydney, Washington, D.C. --
la geografía compleja
para distinguir entre las líneas,
to distinguish between lines,
distinguir entre tipos de estaciones.
to distinguish between types of stations.
universal, según parece.
of a universal language, seemingly.
what a user interface was,
lo que era una interfaz de usuario,
and broke it down to three principles
en tres principios
a casi cualquier problema de diseño.
in nearly any design problem.
de resolver el problema?
to deliver that need?
that an electrical engineer
que un ingeniero eléctrico
la clave para descifrar
complicated systems in the world --
más complicados del mundo?
with a pencil and an idea.
con un lápiz y una idea.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael Bierut - Designer, criticMichael Bierut is a partner in the New York office of Pentagram, a founder of Design Observer and a teacher at Yale School of Art and Yale School of Management.
Why you should listen
Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm's New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.
His projects at Pentagram have included work for the New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Harley-Davidson, The Museum of Arts and Design, Mastercard, the New York City Department of Transportation, the Robin Hood Foundation, Mohawk Paper Mills, New World Symphony, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and MIT Media Lab. As a volunteer to Hillary for America, he created the ubiquitous H logo that was used throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Montreal. He served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989, to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2003, and was awarded the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in 2006. In 2008, he was named winner in the Design Mind category of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. In spring 2016, Bierut was appointed the Henry Wolf Graphic Designer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.
Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art and a lecturer at the Yale School of Management. He writes frequently about design and is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design published by Allworth Press. In 2002, Bierut co-founded Design Observer, a blog of design and cultural criticism which now features podcasts on design, popular culture, and business.
Bierut's book 79 Short Essays on Design was published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press. A monograph on his work, How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry and (every once in a while) change the world, was published in 2015 by Thames & Hudson and Harper Collins. This accompanied the first retrospective exhibition of his work, part of the School of Visual Art's Masters Series, which was on view at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York City for five weeks in autumn 2015. His next book, Now You See It, is due out from Princeton Architectural Press this fall.
Michael Bierut | Speaker | TED.com