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Design duo remixes the MTA subway map with the ‘wrong colors’

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The Wrong Color Subway Map is a fresh take on the standard subway map as we know it

What happens when two graphic designers find themselves unenthused by the MTA’s humdrum subway map? For one artsy husband-and-wife duo, the result is the “Wrong Color Subway Map,” a beautiful remaster of the map as we know it that shakes things up in a cool kind of way.

David Heasty and his wife Stefanie Weigler were shocked at what they summed up to be a lack of captivating design for the city’s subway map. In a featuring Wall Street Journal article, they stated, “It’s just not really nicely designed,” before calling it confusing and visually inept. So to make things right, the couple took on the challenge of making the map more appealing to the eye.

In an unorthodox approach, Heasty and Weigler, who together run their Brooklyn-based design firm Triboro, chose “the most inappropriate colors [they] could think,” resulting in a series of clashing colors across their new hand-crafted map.

This isn’t the first time the pair have remixed the map. In fact, the “Wrong Color Subway Map” is take two on their “One Color Subway Map,” crafted back in 2010. That one involved a simpler process, involving just a white landscape for the boroughs and a solid red hue for the writing and surrounding bodies of water. This time around, they created the map in two vastly different color schemes, one mixing pastel and bright colors while the other uses bold red and blue against a black backdrop.

Both versions are available in the original 45”x58” poster size (the size of subway platform maps) to decorate your space, for just $180.