Comments on: It’s Not Plagiarism; It’s Just Lameness.

By: Kim Taylor

Kim Taylor — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:46:10 +0000

hey, at least it isn’t as bad as that one a while back about all the new busses - the one that had the silhouetted jesus type figure guilding a child and a small ape(?) up a mound of… something as they waited for a flying bus while the text crookedly proclaimed “They Are Coming”… i mean, that was just terrifying.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:46:37 +0000

Im not sure which is worse: this, or the garbage ads (http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=922).

By: radmila

radmila — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:37:37 +0000

Our running girl is decidedly more stylish than NYC’s.
She looks frumpy.

By: Ed Drass

Ed Drass — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:24:13 +0000

Anyone have examples of compelling transit ads TTC could mimic?

By: yipyip

yipyip — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:21:56 +0000

Nice one, Mike. Also, the “chic” Toronto woman looks more like she’s lurching along drunkenly than rushing down the stairs to quickly.

It’s like a badly designed warning for Yorkville trash.

OK so maybe I’m projecting the drunkenness, but the main point stands: she’s just not moving that quickly.

By: Skeezix

Skeezix — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:46:39 +0000

There are lot of fair critiques to be made of the TTC, but this isn’t one of them. If the poster has proven to be effective, then public safety trumps the alleged desire-not-to-be-lame. I can think of dozens of ways that the TTC can better spend its creative dollars than trying to reinvent this wheel.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:49:45 +0000

Seriously though, the real lameness is in the awful secondary school level design.

I love Helvetica as much as the next font geek, but the person who designed this obviously has no clue about how to use things such as leading and neutral space.

A truly pedestrian effort. (Like my pun?)

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:42:44 +0000

Toronto *is* the dollar store version of New York City… as Hamilton is the dollar store version of Toronto… ;-}D

By: Danielle

Danielle — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:38:58 +0000

Our rushing lady is much more chic than the NYC version… plus we have a higher percentage of stair accidents. I say the TTC’s version is an improvement on the original =)

By: Brent Ashley

Brent Ashley — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:04:32 +0000

Joey, reuse of the fruits of an expensive development effort shouldn’t be so foreign to you as a software guy.

I would challenge the assumption implicit in your critique that there’s something inherently wrong with reusing a design in this way.

Can you explain what harm or impropriety there is in even reissuing the same posters wholesale in a completely different geographical market?

By: Eva

Eva — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:32:17 +0000

Why is the subway in Toronto 11% more dangerous than the NYC one?

Also, the posters have made me wonder what the causes of the other 15% of subway injuries are. Fingers in doors? Falling off platforms? I need to know!

By: Milan Davidovic

Milan Davidovic — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:02:25 +0000

Let’s say you travel to different cities with subway systems, and you see similar signs in each place telling you to slow down. Kind of like (though obviously on a smaller scale) the way that stop signs, etc. look the same in (some) different places.

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:51:04 +0000

It would be better to rip out the escalators than pretend they are all going to get fixed sometime soon. At some stations (Don Mills, Yonge/Sheppard, St George) you are pretty well guaranteed that at least one escalator is busted per week.

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:33:02 +0000

@Jacquilynne: An interesting point. Let me mull that one over for a bit.

By: Jacquilynne

Jacquilynne — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:25:27 +0000

Or, it’s ‘Hey, somebody already spent thousands of dollars developing and testing the design of a safety poster, let’s not waste money that could be better spent on, say, making our escalators work occasionally on re-inventing the wheel.’