Time travel station
Posted in Discourse on Thu Oct 12, 06 by Kyle under Design.
I got onto the BART train this weekend to go downtown and for a moment was transported back to the 1970s or 80s when the BART system was still fairly new. The interiors of the cars and stations and even the exteriors of the train cars are now filled with advertising posters and admonishments to be wary of and report suspicious packages. However in between moments of consumer cajoling and paranoid persuasiveness you might, like I, happenstance to glance upon a poster slot that no advertiser had the heart or full coffers to fill that month or the empty spot left when a disgruntled passenger not satisfied with mere disfigurement and graffiti alone ripped down whatever message used to be there entirely.
As often as not you’ll find that beneath all these advertisements are very old BART safety posters. In the life of a poster, usually measured in weeks or months, these are unusual specimens that though somewhat worse for the wear have still managed to survive intact. The above is a sample, a little blurry from the being underground in a crowed train taking a telephoto picture effect, but for that I hope you will forgive me. I love little moments of anachronism like this. There is something about this poster and its series brethren that make me pause for a moment and look more carefully than I might otherwise.
The first thing I notice are the clothes and what they connote. Primarily, Business. Shiny black shoes, low heels, brown trousers, grey pleated skirts and pantyhose. BART was always conceived as a way to bring in workers from the suburbs to the central business cores of San Francisco and Oakland, as a commuter train. From the mainstream bedroom to the mainstream boardroom, or at least the mainstream mail or reception room.
This photo clearly tells us just what kind of people should be riding the train. Fascinating that we can surmise so much about these poster people and what they do just by looking at their feet and legs. BART usually is more sedate and insular than the other more rowdy transit systems of the Bay Area. The number of “So, I was on the 22 Fillmore and…” horror stories far outnumber the “So, I was on the BART and…” stories. On the bus there are not crisp automatic voices announcing with an authoritative exactitude the arrival time and destination of each oncoming vehicle. There is not air conditioning and perfect 3mph per second computer controlled acceleration and de-acceleration. BART is cool and automatic, the bus sizzles and lurches.
Also, notice just how carefully the heel of that little red slipper is placed ever so precipitously on the very edge of ‘The Gap’! So close to high-heeled ankle twisting disaster, teetering ever so slightly just to demonstrate the complete mastery. Notice the orderly procession while entering and exiting the train, the harmony of neutral beige, yellow, red, brown, and black. Is it a parable for an idealized world? A perfect society where everyone is polite and gets along subsumed under the mantle of work and an automated seamless technology. Here is a religious paean to Order. But who’s order is it?
I wonder just why ‘The Gap’ is so singularly distinct and important to merit not only capitalization but also quote marks. Is this station gap so new and novel that it requires this typographic distinction? Its inconceivableness so great that it requires special rights in the lexical society for us to recognize its existence, along the lines Xerox and WordPerfect. Is this ‘The Gap’ a brand to pay homage to? So much typographic fuss over a minor two to three inches. Was the world really so different, so full of technology-awe back then that this highlighting of the train gap into a full fledged concept didn’t seem a little silly. Were there posters encouraging us to Hold on to the ‘Handrail’! or Not leave newspapers on ‘The Seat’? Not to say that safety posters are silly, but just the way the design(er) tries to draw attention to the message at hand. It is one of the amusing incidents in the continual turnover in style and the zeitgeist.
Plus, what takes you back in time more than a nice bold poster version of that good old 70s and 80s classic ITC Garamond?
PS. Did you know that the BART system’s official birthday is September 11, 1972, the first day of passenger service on the then new train system? Whoah! Creepy much?
So sorry dearest reader, comments are now closed for this article.
great poster, great comments. i too noticed the shoes first. well, they’re all shiny, and red!
wow, what a find! I think its funny that BART hasn’t changed their logo at all.. but whats up with the beige carpet?? It’s like what I’ve got in my apartment!
just a thought, but I wonder if the reason ‘the Gap’ is set apart so much is that it is referring to vernacular more common in british english.. they might be pointing out that the poster is emulating the british “mind the gap” thing.
I have a version of the blue-grey BART carpet in my apartment too, no beige thankfully. I wondered if they were being cheeky about ‘The Gap’ and British parlance, it’s just funny that they make so much of it.