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Whether your on your way to work, or on your way to school, or just getting across town to an event, our transit system gets us there.

All of us living in around or even visiting San Francisco will have some form of interaction with our metro system in the course of our day. It's an established part of our city that fits into the very backbone of our city.

The current logo had much of a feeling of sterility, coldness, and lack of emphasis on the "essential" feeling for the service it provides. After many ideas ended up in the recycling bin, I started to look for influences already existing in the city that give this feeling of "necessity", "weight" and "importance".

The challenge of course is creating something that is easily readable when trying to figure out who issued your parking ticket, or who gave you the free parking for a concert. Something scalable easily placed into a poster with some color, but something that was uniquely San Francisco.

On my commute every morning I could see beautiful hand painted signs on businesses everywhere which coupled with some inspiration from one of my all time heroes Michael Schwab had the right feeling for once. Make a font by hand that could be read from across the street as well as on something as small as a muni pass. Starting with fonts like Futura and some earlier transit fonts from 1920's and 30's posters I started sketching something that looked like it belonged in San Francisco. Then adding colors that are unmistakable as being from San Francisco, it started to feel more and more like something I could see around town without getting that "who paid someone to design that!" feeling.

All the while giving me a fantastic opportunity to try out a style that was previously made popular by streamlined trains, planes, and automobiles many years before, when America was "On the Move". SFMTA helps us everyday on our journey into the future, as well as gives an ode to our colorful past. Enjoy!