Mexico City Metro

Lance Wyman's 1969 signage and station icons The system that showed a station can be recognized without reading its name. Wyman, fresh from the 1968 Olympics graphics, gave every station a pictogram drawn from its name or local history, alongside a color and a number for each line and a custom typeface, Tipo Metro. Popular accounts often say the icons were made for riders who could not read. Others doubt it, and Wyman rejected illiteracy as the motive for his Olympic pictograms, arguing that a visitor who does not speak the local language is just as illiterate as someone who cannot read. Either way, the icons serve any rider who matches a picture faster than a name, in a bright pink, orange and yellow palette that is distinctly Mexican.