As part of ongoing arts for transit, MTA commissioned artist Reed Seifer to create new metrocard. He came up with a single word “optimism”. However he acknowledged that small hole at the end of the metrocard which looks like a dot was not in his design idea, it just happened. There are 2 versions of this card with different font. New version with very slightly different font appeared in January 2010. Total number of issued cards is 14 million.

I met the artist who created this metrocard and got autograph on one of them.

Another black and white series introduced in 2009: “Train of Thought” sponsored by New York Times and WQXR radio also owned by NYT. Each card has a quotation from famous writer or thinker.

Since NYT sold radio station WQXR Jeopardy! ABC7 show start sponsoring this series.

All together there are 26 cards already. Quotations from Shakespeare, Einstein, Elliot, Donne, Kafka, Poincare, Darwin, Lincoln, Kant, Morison, Arnold, Chuang Tzu, Herodotus, Nietzsche, Poincare, Howe, Wilde, Greeley, Whitman, Emerson, Khatun, Boethius.

The last cards have different sponsors: Jeopardy! ABC7 stays as a sponsor, but New York Times dropped out and was replaced by New York Public Library and The Humanities Initiative at NYU.

It was very obvious choice to start this series with quotation from Shakespeare.

123►

MTA issued metrocards with some facts about subway system. Series was named ‘Transit Facts’.

123►