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ABOUT

Bob Noorda

Italian graphic designer, b. Amsterdam, 1927, d. Milan, 2010. He lived and worked in Milan from 1954 until his death. Noorda attended the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (now the Gerrit Rietveld Academie), graduating in 1950. He moved to Milan in 1954. In Italy, Noorda gained fame for his design in the late 1950s and early 1960s for posters and advertisements for Pirelli where he also served as art director.

In 1964 he won, together with Franco Albini and Franca Helg, the Compasso d'Oro, the most prestigious Italian award for design, for the Milan Metro station design. The typeface used for the Milan metro was called Noorda. Noorda is a modification or optimization of Helvetica. Several other subway systems later used his typeface, including the entire New York City subway system in the 1960s, as well as other subway signage projects for Noorda in Sao Paulo, Naples and the regional train network in Lombardy.

In 1965, Noorda and fellow Milan-based designer Massimo Vignelli were among the seven founders of Unimark International, an American design firm with offices around the world, including Chicago and Milan. Noorda is best known in the United States for Unimark's work with New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. These wayfinding fonts were revived in 2017 by Gabriel Ruiz as New York City Metro Font.

Noorda was a professor in graphic design at Societa Umanitaria in Milan, ISIA Urbino and IED in Milan. From 1996 to 2001 he was a professor of visual communication at Politecnico di Milano.

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