Back in February of last year, Rep1 sent us this
photo which he had taken on the subway that afternoon:

/>At the time we had no idea who the artist was. Then yesterday we received the
following email:

“hey, wassup. do you guys have a pict of href="http://www.eyemagazine.com/opinion.php?id=2&oid=108">this anywhere in
your archives? probably before the days of the colletive, I remeber these for a
bout a month or two in nyc subs back in the 90’s and I recall they were all
removed quite quickly… always missed them: true, fake public subway
stickers

From Eye
Magazine

Imitation subway notices by True
/>by Stefan Sagmeister

Inspiration

The one piece of
graphic design that truly influenced me was a campaign by a New York designer,
illustrator and artist who calls himself True.

It is a project that
took place within the New York subway. As in all public transport systems there
is a whole slew of offical signs and stickers to tell you what you should do and
not do. True printed up a range of additional stickers imitating the look of the
offical ones but designed his rather more philosophical in content.

/>The reason they hit me was their placing: riding in a train, staring in the
air, being bored, looking but not reading a directional signs, slowly realising
the message being a different one, enjoying the content, happily anticipating
others. I could have come up with an idea like that but I would have made the
content cynical, critical or Guilliani of the Transit Authority. Its True’s gift
to have opted for unfashionable optimism.

He met every Wednesday at
midnight with fifteen to twenty friends at the same subway stop and they divided
up the different subway lines among them. One group would do the A line, another
the F and so on.

He also equipped all of his helpers with fake
tranist authority I.D.s and even made up fake authorisation letters so his
friends would not get arrested.