Bob Noorda, Subway Sign Designer, Dead at 82

Bob Noorda, one of the designers credited for bringing a Modernist, uniform style to the New York City subway system, is dead at 82.

From The New York Times’ obituary:

Mr. Noorda’s best-known work in the United States was for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which in 1966 commissioned his firm, Unimark International, to modernize and unify the look of the subway system’s signs. The firm had been recommended by Mildred Constantine, an influential design curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

Noorda’s designs hold up well, even 40 years after their inception.  They have become icons of New York’s urban scene and through them he is survived.