This post shares my journey of working at the High Line and a summary of the impact that I had there. To read my personal story about how I found the job at the High Line after traveling for 3 months through New Zealand and Indonesia, check out this post: How the High Line and I found each other
Neighborhood memories.
Sketched for the High Line Magazine, 2017.
In this article I will talk about the…
7 things I’m most proud of:
High Line Brand Refresh
2019: Opening of the Spur, inaugural High Line Plinth & milestone year
High Line Network and their first Symposium
Celebrating Medicinal Plants
Experiencing the High Line almost 365 days a year
I love the High Line.
How about you?
I first heard about it when I was still a student at School of Visual Arts. I remember checking out the 2005 exhibit at the MoMa and also the design competitions exhibit at Grand Central. Everybody went, the teachers and the students. It was so inspiring!
I remember when the High Line first opened in 2009, and walking on it for the first time with my Opto family — after a short walk from our Chelsea office — and actually hanging out on the wooden day beds at the Diller – Von Furstenberg Sundeck & Water Feature (between 14th St. and 15th St.) When does a New Yorker have time to chill out on those daybeds anyway? I barely did it even as I was working just a block away. It was like a pause out of time to be up there, putting our bare feet into the water. Seeing the city from a different perspective.
The High Line has always given me so much joy, even just the thought of it. I’m sure this is the case for many. It’s a true story with a happy ending, and a story that keeps going. Almost everyone I know say that anytime they have visitors, first thing they do is they take them to the High Line.
As I worked there for three-plus years, I was surrounded by amazing art, nature & public programs, all for free! I knew then, I’d look back on my life and think, “Wow, did this really happen?” I am so grateful for the time I spent working at the High Line.
All that said, it was A LOT of work! There were very few of us making it all happen. It was a combination of startup mentality and a non-profit cultural institution. I hope this blog post will give you an idea of my experience there, my impact, and what we all were able to accomplish as a collective.
A photo collage of some of my favorite photos.
A little history of the High Line
If you know this already, feel free to skip ahead!
For those that don’t know and to give a little context, the High Line used to be an elevated railroad track that ran through the west side of Manhattan along 10th Avenue. Once better roads and highways were created and the trucking industry took over, it was abandoned and got overtaken by nature. Many people, including the city and Mayor Giuliani, wanted to destroy it. Luckily, in 1999 it was saved from demolition and recreated into this amazing 1.5-mile park by co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond.
You can learn about the High Line’s history here:
www.thehighline.org/history
Huh? It’s not funded by the city?
What a lot of people don’t know is that the High Line is almost entirely run on donations by donors and people like you and me. They have a generous board and the city does contribute something, and takes care of water and electricity for example, but ultimately the park is run by a non profit called Friends of the High Line.
You can become a member or donate something today! You can even adopt a plant for a loved on. As I’m writing this in 2020, due to Covid you can even adopt a dot now.
Mission / Vision
After being open for 10 years, the High Line recently reimagined its mission and vision:
“The High Line is both a nonprofit organization and a public park on the West Side of Manhattan. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, we’re devoted to reimagining the role public spaces have in creating connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.
Built on a historic, elevated rail line, the High Line was always intended to be more than a park. You can walk through gardens, view art, experience a performance, savor delicious food, or connect with friends and neighbors-all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City.
Nearly 100% of our annual budget comes through donations from people like you, who help us operate, maintain, and program the park.
The High Line is owned by the City of New York and we operate under a license agreement with NYC Parks.”
The High Line’s design is a collaboration between:
James Corner Field Operations (Project Lead)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Architects)
Piet Oudolf (Garden Designer)
You can see more about the design and gardens on the website:
www.thehighline.org/design
www.thehighline.org/gardens
Here are some great books for further reading:
High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky
by Joshua David and Robert Hammond
The High Line
by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio & Renfro
Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes
by Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke
1—The High Line Brand Refresh
The High Line identity was created by the legendary female graphic designer, Paula Scher, 20-ish years ago. The story goes that she sketched out the H train track logo on a napkin at one of the initial meetings. Below are some of the original designs that were done at Pentagram where she’s been a long time partner.
Fun fact: I had Paula Scher as my portfolio teacher at SVA. We used to meet for class at Pentagram.
Pentagram’s original designs.
At some point, as it can happen to any business, the High Line’s designed materials began to look scattered, inconsistent and outdated. Part of the reason this can happen is that over time things just start to feel dated and there’s a need for a refresh. Each department was also using different external design studios for their needs which made things incoherent, and because there was no internal creative team looking over the organization holistically, things were looking a bit all over the place. Kirk Love, VP of Communications at the time, had the idea of bringing design in-house to have one cohesive look and feel.
Some time before I got there, Pentagram did a quick refresh design exploration and updated the look and feel to be a bit more fresh. Less use of the light green, more black and white. The headline slab-serif font changed from Rockwell to Geometric Slab 712, and the san serif font changed from Agenda to Graphik. They also thickened the logo a bit and introduced a new “bar” element. So we had a nice starting off point. Casey Walter was also working there as a part-time freelance designer, as part of our tiny communications team that was handling everything.
When I got there in late 2016, this is what things were looking like.
There was a lot of text everywhere. The light green was getting hard to read. A lot of lines. And everything was using the old fonts. There were A TON of materials that needed to be redesigned. So after doing some brand exploration… we then started tackling things bit by bit. It took years to get to every little thing. Finding ways to simplify all of the materials and update to the fresher brand identity, while also creating new materials.
High Line Art
High Line Art was another challenge. They had their own logo (An A instead of an H), look & feel, website, emails and signage. Over the course of a couple years, with the help of the redesign of the website, it got folded back into the overall High Line branding.
I should mention that there were over ten other sub-brands & departments that needed to be looked at. In fact, we created a sub-brand system for: High Line Art, High Line Network, public programs, gardens, families, teens, membership, fundraising, shop, and educational partnerships — they all had designed materials and there was always something to do!
Friends of the High Line
Another major shift that happened during my time there, is the shift from calling themseleves Friends of the High Line to simply the High Line. There was always confusion when to use which name, and most people coming to the High Line knew nothing about Friends of the High Line, so it simplified.
Overview
Here’s a year-end booklet (2018) that gives you a good overview and sense of all things High Line.
Simplification
The pocket guide (images below) is a great example of something that used to be complex, that we simplified. There is an info cart on the park that people can go to for information (run by volunteers). They were handing out two sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper, printed front and back. One sheet told the history and described all the design features on the park. The other sheet was for High Line Art, which had a map and all the commissioned art that could be found on the High Line that year. I simplified this into one 11 x 17 foldable pocket guide that’s evolved over the years. It’s not too glamorous, but efficiency makes me happy :) It’s like a map that you could get when you go to any museum.
We also simplified the signage system for our public events to be most poster like.
2—High Line App
In my spare time (that’s a joke, I didn’t have any), I spent some time creating the High Line App, which really was a more interactive and descriptive version of the pocket guide. I did everything for the app except program it. UX design, design, gathering content, ideating content, collaborating with a freelance writer and app developer, as well as finalizing a launch. It was a journey to make it happen but it was fun and worth it!
Photo by Liz Ligon
3—High Line Website
This website was one of the biggest projects I've ever worked on. It took a long time and a lot of effort and organizing. It’s a massive, massive site, with many moving parts. As you now know, the High Line is not just a park but a cultural institution and a non profit, that has many public facing aspects to it. We had to find a way to represent all of this. This was completely designed and created in house, working closely with the developers of the site, Storyware. It was built in WordPress with a flexible modular system.
4—2019: Opening of the Spur, inaugural High Line Plinth, & milestone year
In spring of 2019, the newest section of the High Line opened, called the Spur. It was created in collaboration with what people were looking for in a new public space "for public programming, restrooms, access points, food, art, and plants. The flow of the space was designed to create moments of interactions—both between people and with the surroundings.”
In this section also launched the first ever High Line Plinth, which is a space solely dedicated to a rotating series of new, monumental, contemporary art commissions. “The High Line Plinth is a new landmark destination for public art, designed as the focal point of the Spur. Unlike most of the other sections of the park where visitors are moving along thoroughfares, the Spur is conceived as a natural gathering space. The Plinth serves as an anchor at the center of this piazza, creating a dialogue with the towering skyscrapers and arresting vistas of the immediate surroundings. Simone Leigh’s Brick House, a tribute to Black beauty, is the inaugural artwork for the Plinth.”
And on top of all of this, 2019 was a milestone year marking 10 years since the opening of the park, and 20 years since the inception of the Friends of the High Line! This is how the “X” came to be part of the milestone mark, representing decades. So grateful to have been a part of this iconic time at the High Line.
Check out this brochure that was made for the opening of the Spur.
5—High Line Network and the 2019 Symposium
In 2017, launched the High Line Network, a group of infrastructure reuse projects from all over nation — and the people who are helping them come to life. To me, this is a very exciting part of the High Line’s future as this is a network of current and future parks that are trying to green our cities! One of the big points of it is so that they can learn from each other, especially projects that are in early stages that can learn from projects that are further along or even developed like the High Line.
Some of the things I got to take part in:
I helped launch their website in 2017
Created this Best Practices Toolkit: Strategies and Tactics for Early-Phase Infrastructure Reuse Projects – Volume 1 with design help from Buro Svenja and Guillaume Kashima’s amazing illustrations! I’ve always dreamed to work with him and finally made it happen.
I designed the first High Line Network Symposium in 2019 where convened the largest gathering of North American infrastructure reuse project leaders. Everyone was extremely engaged and it was inspiring! (Fun fact: This event was held at the beautiful Ford Foundation building, for whom I had worked on the brand identity 10 years prior!)
Here you can see some of the illustrations in the Best Practices Toolkit drawn by Guillaume Kashima.
6—Celebrating Medicinal Plants
Once a year, through a partnership with TD Bank, High Line Gardens creates an annual celebration based on a theme or one of the sections of the garden. In 2019, the theme was Celebrating Medicinal Plants!
The design had an apothecary theme and we took the milestone mark and used it as part of the design. It was a month long celebration and also there was a one day Wellness Fair with guest apothecaries, herbal practitioners, art making, tours, and more, at the newly opened Spur. There was Tarot on the High Line! It was a great collaboration between public programs and gardens.
The Wellness Fair ended with a pretty fun and engaging performance by Batalá, an all-women Afro Brazilian percussion ensemble, and I’ve been tempted to join them! You can learn more about medicinal plants on the High Line in this field-guide inspired booklet. The design for this project was created in collaboration with junior designer, Misha Hunt and illustrator Aleesha Nandhra.
7—Experiencing the High Line almost 365 days a year
Before I started working for the High Line, I went to the High Line maybe once a year if I was lucky. When I did start to work there, I didn’t realize that there was newly commissioned art every year and amazing free public programs during the summer season. High Line Art launched in 2009 and you can search through its archive to see projects from the past. They’re awesome!
I also never saw the High Line in all its seasons before! In the years I was there, I would try to walk it as much as I could in the spring, fall and summer. I watched trees and flowers bloom. I saw the leaves turn into fall colors. I saw snow fall on the High Line. And the trees bending and moving with strong winds. I saw many sunsets from the office! When I was in Indonesia, I saw so many incredible sunsets that I literally told myself that I wanted to see more sunsets in NYC, and that became possible everyday from our office window.
I even got to participate in Spring Cutback, which is when the entire High Line gets trimmed back to allow new growth to come through.
Sadly due to Covid this year, there were no public programs nor any newly commissioned art installed. However, I do encourage you to try and make your way to a free event when they are available again.
Some of the most memorable events I checked out:
I’m sharing because these artists are worth following.
Mile-Long Opera
This was really a 1.5 mile long opera! Made up of 1,000 singers from across New York. Once in a lifetime. milelongopera.com
All of the ‘Out of Line’ series:
Heisenberg by Janani Balasubramanian
No Agenda Genda by Antonio Ramos
Twice the Moon by MOONCAKE COLLECTIVE
I got to play the part of paparazzi in this one:
Shasta Geaux Pop by Ayesha Jordan & Charlotte Brathwaite
No More Shimmering Cowboys by Yara Travieso
Heartbeat Opera by Renegade Cabaret
Somehow I didn’t manage to see too many High Line Art Performances but these were dope:
PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me by Alexandra Bachzetsis
Composition 20 by Naama Tsabar
Sensation 1/This Interior by Ligia Lewis
And many more…
<3 <3 <3
Masha
P.S. There are so many amazing photographers at the High Line. You can check them out here: https://www.thehighline.org/photos/by-photographer/