For two weeks last October I stood at 42nd and Lexington with a spectrometer, measuring the reflected luminance of every vehicle that stopped at the light. Yellow cabs registered three times the chromatic intensity of any sedan or anonymous rideshare in eggshell white. Hertz knew this in 1907 — a university study convinced him yellow was easiest to spot from a distance, and he painted his entire fleet in that saturated tangerine. He never looked back.
The Medallion as Municipal Typography
Each taxi medallion is a small miracle of regulated design: black type locked inside a white rectangle, precise enough to read through rain, steam, and crosstown glare. Before digital vinyl, these marks were hand-painted by sign-writers in Long Island City, turning every cab door into a moving plate of municipal typography.