I just discovered that parts of New York's subway system (the old IND lines, for all you public transportation buffs) have an obscure color-coding navigation system, which the highly otaku nycsubway.org describes thusly:
As you go away from downtown Manhattan, whether uptown or towards Brooklyn, the colors change each time an express station is reached. Thereafter, all the local stations have the same color (or color group) tiles as the preceding express station. This presumably was intended to serve as a means for helping passengers to remember where to change for the local on the way home from work.
The colored tiles don't work as planned, because I never noticed any logic to the station colors throughout my five years in New York. And I'm a designer by trade. Nevertheless, nycsubway.org's Prismacolor-based descriptions of the tile color combinations (Scarlet Lake + Dark Brown, Bottle Green + Ice Green) inspired me to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon making a little simulation of the color transitions from deep Brooklyn to upper Manhattan.
Pretty, in its way. Enjoy.
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