Metroboard: a mid-century live subway map

CITY SOUNDS IS FINISHED! (+ event invite)
4 days ago – Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 10:51:43 AM

Prelude: we know it's been a second since the last Metroboard update, but we've got one coming to you shortly (hopefully next week). A lot of work has been going on behind-the-scenes, just nothing glamorous enough to share with you over the past month.

That said, we can tell you that so far the schedule is holding without any further delay! More next week - thank you for your patience :-)

City Sounds

As a reminder, City Sounds is our album, offered on vinyl, that remixes subway/transit/city sounds into original tracks - one for each of the six Metroboard cities. 

Over 200 of you have submitted recordings of your commutes and adventures in your city that we've used in the tracks - thank you! :-)

This project has come together in such a cool way and we're super excited to finally share with you the culmination of it all! without further ado...

Album Art

We've had the privilege of working with an incredible painter and artist Gregorio Zanardi to create the album art for City Sounds! We loved his surreal, evocative style when we first came across a piece of his and knew we'd love to work with him on this project. Gregorio had the chance to listen through all the tracks on the album to develop the concept with us. We think the characters and scene he created are perfect. 

We asked Gregorio to briefly talk through the project and his creative process for the piece - please meet Gregorio!

Tracks

At this point, all six tracks are substantially complete (minor tweaks and mastering notwithstanding) and we think they're awesome.

Here's an updated teaser video with a 30-s excerpt from all six tracks!

The brilliant madman behind these tracks is our dear friend and incredibly talented musician, Nate Schwartz! Nate has worked tirelessly to turn the vision of this album into reality over the past couple of months, and we asked him to talk a bit about his background and the process to share with you all.

Please meet Nate!

"Celebrity" features !

Something we're super excited to share with you is that the album will include an intro, interlude, and outro by the iconic voices of each city's metro!

We reached out to some of the folks who recorded the original announcements on the NY Subway, DC Metro, CTA, MBTA, BART, and LA Metro and they were all super enthusiastic to support the project!

These are the voices that you all may have grown familiar with over the years of riding these respective systems, announcing the next station, service interruptions, and more - we're so thrilled that they decided to lend their voices to the album!

City sounds will feature excerpts by the following folks:

• Charlie Pellet (NYC) - "Stand clear of the closing doors, please!"
• Randi Miller (D.C.) - "Doors Opening!"
• Frank Oglesby (MBTA) - All MBTA announcements!
• Lee Crooks (CTA) - All 'L' announcements!
• LA Metro - The voice of Metro Rail announcements!
• BART - The iconic George & Gracie

City Sounds Listening Party

To celebrate the culmination of the project, share the full tracks, and get together with you all, we'll be hosting a listening party for City Sounds on April 5th in Los Angeles.

For those who aren't in Los Angeles (which is most of you!), we still want to make sure you can tune in if you'd like - so the event will be streamed on our socials (Instagram, TikTok) and YouTube. 

During the event, we'll do a full play-through of the entire album as well as have some discussions and Q&A about the tracks and artwork!

If you'd like to come (in-person or virtually) please RSVP here! We'll send updates and livestream links day-of. RSVP'ing will make sure you get any necessary updates. Hope to see many of you there! :-)

Ordering City Sounds

If you haven't ordered City Sounds but the spirit moved you to do so after this update, just drop us an e-mail and we can unlock your survey - from there, you can add City Sounds and resubmit!

The Final Metroboard Maps!
about 1 month ago – Mon, Feb 10, 2025 at 10:37:56 AM

We're super excited to share the final Metroboard maps with you all!

If you recall, we requested your help reviewing our draft maps to find errors, provide recommendations, and solicit your overall feedback.

Over 100 of you submitted ~600 comments, on top of which we conducted our own additional self-review to arrive at these updated maps. We hope you'll find they are improved from the originals! 

Background

Before showing you the changes, we wanted to provide some insight into how we design these, what we try to achieve, and what the limitations are.

• System Maps: Our maps are based on each transit agency's simplified map of the system. We chose these since they're the maps most people are familiar with. 

• Geographical Accuracy: Accordingly, we don't usually match the actual physical reality of the systems (i.e., station spacing, alignment, track bends, etc) unless the map is geographically accurate (like NYC, Chicago)
  
  That said, we do sometimes make minor improvements to the geographic accuracy over the simplified system map if it doesn't appreciably diverge from the original.

• Consistent Curves: We try our best to use the same curve/bend geometry throughout the maps since we think this an essential choice for the map to look clean and consistent. 
  
  This limits how closely we can position things since there's often a minimum space needed for the curves we use. In fact, ~98% of all bends use only these two variants:

• Number of Lights: The number of lights for each station matches the number of tracks at that particular station (Excluding New York's map configuration, of course). Since there cannot be more trains than there are tracks, this allows us to show all of the trains at the station.
  
  The lights will be lit to match the line color of the inbound train for that particular track. In some cases (ex: Chicago loop) there are many different lines that stop at the same tracks, and the color will change often. In other cases, certain tracks will only be used by the same line every time.

• Extensions: We initially planned to include most planned system extensions in order to "future proof" Metroboard.
  
  We have since reconsidered including some extensions we'd previously thought to include. Extensions that are in advanced stages of construction, overwhelmingly funded, or expect to open in the next ~5 years will be included - those that don't meet this criteria will not be. 
  
  Although including some longer term extensions (5+ year openings) to avoid issuing an updated Metroboard was a reasonable cause, the downside of having swathes of "dead" lights that wouldn't light up for years on end was enough to limit our inclusions to operation within the next ~5 years. 
  
  We especially did not want to add projects that may not come to fruition, which is more likely the further out a project's projection is. 
  
  The extensions we chose to not include are all ones that are not going to come to fruition for at least ten years (assuming they are built at all). We figured it's more appropriate to make a new Metroboard at that point than make the wrong guess now and have an inaccurate board. 

Updated Maps

Below are sections for each of the updated maps. There are well over 300 changes across them all, so for brevity we're only mentioning the major changes on this update page. 

Click each map to see a full high-res version of it.

For each map there's also a set of links that'll take you to the full changelog and old map (if you want to really get into all the details!)

New York

Full New York changelog here. The old map is here.

New York presented one of the biggest challenges - because of its sheer size and complexity, it's hard to fit onto Metroboard and still look like the MTA map.

The previous map did a particularly poor job at this, with the biggest offender being the western Queens area and anything along the East River. Frankly, it was hard to even make out that there was an East River.

We've gone through and meticulously updated the map to be as accurate as it possibly can be while fitting within Metroboard dimensions. 

Major changes:

• Accuracy: Full overhaul of the geographic accuracy of the map. We vertically and horizontally aligned corresponding streets and avenues as much as text and track limitations allowed and did a bottoms-up restructuring of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan to dramatically tune up how closely these follows the MTA map.
• Tracks: We updated the tracks to accurately reflect when one line goes over another line - they now cross each other as they do on the actual map.
• Naming: We adjusted all naming to match the official naming on the MTA map - mainly, removing all slashes and replacing with hyphens.
• Removed 2nd Ave Subway Extension: We felt that the fate of the project is currently still too uncertain (and the timeline too far out) for inclusion. 

Chicago

Full Chicago changelog here. The old map is here.

Major changes:

• Alignment: Stations that refer to through streets (like Pulaski, Cicero, etc) were aligned whenever possible. In general, we improved the relative positioning of all stations to one another.
• Naming: We updated naming to use hyphens and slashes to match the CTA map (previously we used exclusively slashes).
• Minor Station Updates: Howard was updated to a 6x1 while Monroe and Jackson were combined into 4x1's.
  
  Side note: Howard technically only has four tracks, but using four lights required us to have the Skokie Swift terminate at the same lights where the purple express began, which confused a lot of people. So six it is!

Boston

Full Boston changelog here. The old map is here.

Major changes:

• Station Lights: We corrected stations that had an insufficient number of lights to represent all the tracks (North Station, Haymarket, Park St, JFK/UMass)
• Station Removals: MBTA's Green Line Accessibility Project is combining the Brandon Hall and Fairbanks St stations into one, as well as decommissioning the Kent St station. We've done the same to match.
• Mattapan Trolley: The Mattapan Line is now separated from the Red Line Ashmont branch, with a single light adjacent to Ashmont representing the balloon platform there.
• Silver Line: We did the hard work of understanding the SL (we literally watched YouTube videos of full ride-throughs on all routes) to get the representation to be accurate. This included adding some better arrows and additional lights at South Station, Boylston, and Chinatown. 
  
  Since we started Metroboard, MBTA has updated their official map and made the silver line a thinner line than subway lines - because of this, we've transitioned it to being dashed. 

Washington D.C.

Full D.C. changelog here. The old map is here.

Major changes:

• Purple Line: We added the MDOT purple line as promised during our campaign. This project is substantially complete and planned to open soon - it'll be tightly integrated with WMATA and likely become a core service for folks living on the Maryland side of D.C.

Los Angeles

Full LA changelog here. The old map is here.

LA didn't undergo any major changes! Lots of small tweaks.

Bay Area

Full Bay Area changelog here. The old map is here.

Major changes:

• BART Extension: We removed the BART SV extension to Santa Clara. Unfortunately, this project is still in a tenuous position with funding, and even then, would not open for ten years at best.
• Caltrain Portal: The Caltrain extension to San Francisco is in an even less advanced state and also expected to take about a decade. 
• Oakland Stations: We corrected the three main Oakland stations (MacArthur, 19th St/Oakland, and 12th St/Oakland) to have the appropriate number of tracks and also updated tracks to properly indicate the service pattern.
• Oakland Wye: We updated the tracking between Lake Merritt, 12th St/Oakland City Center, and West Oakland to properly represent the infamous "Oakland Wye" of the BART system.
• SFO: SFO has been moved to represent its actual relative location and match previous BART maps; the tracks now indicate all possible BART service patterns in this area. 
• Transbay Tube: We decided to add a pair of lights for the Transbay Tube even though it isn't a station. It's so long that there are regularly two trains in it, so we wanted to be able to show them both. The station outline is dashed and the title is all caps to visually distinguish it from regular stations.

Final Thoughts

The maps may not look like they underwent a dramatic change, but trust us when we say there were many days and nights spent on these updates!

Making adjustments to even one label or station has downstream effects that shift entire sections of the map! Keeping things aligned relative to one another requires many individual changes which begets even more downstream impacts. Moving a few dozen things around causes hundreds of other things to move!

We hope that the work we put into these improvements has made these maps a more faithful and accurate representation of the systems and cities you love! 

If you happen to find any issues or have any feedback, please drop a comment or e-mail us! 

BIG Metroboard Production Update!
about 1 month ago – Mon, Feb 03, 2025 at 09:48:59 AM

Hi all! The big Metroboard Production Update is here!

Please note this is a long, comprehensive update. Below is a bullet list of the topics covered in order so you can scroll to any that are of interest to you. 

• Fulfillment Schedule Update
• Visiting our Manufacturer
• Prototype Updates
• Next Steps

Fulfillment Schedule Update

Our original delivery estimate of late March 2025 has been delayed by about three months, with production now scheduled to finish by the end of May. We go into the details driving this new production schedule in the rest of this update. Once production is complete, shipping across the Pacific will take an additional 2-3 weeks before the Metroboards reach our fulfillment partner and are sent out to you.

We now estimate your Metroboards will be in-hand June 2025. 

We know you all are just as keen as we are to get your Metroboards. As a two-person team launching our first mass-produced consumer product, we built out what we thought to be an aggressive but achievable schedule. While we won't hit our initial estimate, we’ve worked hard to keep this delay as short as possible. 

Delays are common in new product manufacturing—often much longer than ours—and we’ve prioritized quality over speed to make sure your Metroboards are the best possible quality and something we're proud to stand behind. 

(For reference, of tech products on Kickstarter, ~5% deliver on-time, ~5% within 6 months late, 40% 6-12 months late, 30% 1-2 yrs late, and 20% never deliver)

Our Kickstarter pricing reflected our commitment to our early supporters, acknowledging the uncertainties of a first production run. We’re incredibly grateful for your trust and want you to know that we take our promise seriously. We feel the full responsibility of delivering a high-quality product and are working our little hearts out to make it worth the wait!

We want to thank you in advance for your understanding, and promise we're always doing everything we can to deliver something that's of the quality you deserve and as quickly as we can. For anyone with questions, please feel free to e-mail us ([email protected])

Visiting our Manufacturer

On Jan 21 - 22, we made the trip to visit our manufacturing partner in Shenzhen after months of calls and many (very long) emails. It was so fun to meet the team and so helpful to work together in person to finalize key aspects of the design!

Since the close of our campaign, we’ve been focused on implementing the promised design updates. Over the past month, our manufacturing partner has been assembling the updated Metroboard prototypes for two key reasons:

1) Design Update Validation - These prototypes were made to validate that all the changes work well and look even better :-)

2) Manufacturing Method Validation - This is the first time our partner has made a Metroboard from end-to-end. Building these prototypes served to validate their processes, sub-contractors, materials, and assembly. 

The prototypes were great, and met all of our expectations for appearance and quality. All design changes functioned seamlessly and there are no major issues that could cause further delay. More details on specific changes can be found under the "Prototype Updates" section.

Our partners' engineers assembled two full prototypes from start to finish alongside us, which gave us all an opportunity to talk through the assembly process, any lingering challenges, and how we'll address them.

I thought you said during the campaign that the prototypes had already been made with actual factories/manufacturing partners?

Yes! And they had been. We manufactured all components (circuit boards, aluminum panels, wooden frames) with established factories we planned to use in mass-production. 

However, these factories were specialized - one made sheet metal, one made wood products, one made circuit boards. We had to find another partner, referred to as a Contract Manufacturer (CM) that would manage the production of all of the parts and handle assembly, packaging, and shipment. 

We discovered that CM's typically have their own trusted and streamlined partners for various part types - sheet metal, wood, and so-forth. So it was more expedient and affordable to allow the CM to use these partners rather than force them to use the factories we had used before. 

This does not mean we're starting from zero - quite the opposite. Because we had already fine-tuned each part for manufacturability, the CM’s suppliers were able to produce high-quality components right away. 

If we hadn’t done this, we’d just now be discovering production challenges for individual components like the sheet metal, wood, etc..

Prototype Updates

Our campaign mentioned a few design changes to the final Metroboard design before production, re-iterated below:

• Light Leaks - Improved light diffuser to prevent light leakage between adjacent stations.
• Rear Buttons - Resizing rear buttons to square and adjusting color. 
• Antenna - Cover antenna cutout with transparent plastic to serve as a status indicator. 
• Maps - Updating and finalizing all maps.

Below are updates on all of these and some extra notes and changes.

Light Diffuser

The original Metroboard prototypes used a transparent 3D-printed "light pipe" array to bring light from LED's to the aluminum panel (photo below). 

This component was always known to have some light leakage issues, where a lit station would cause an adjacent one to be slightly lit.  This is seen in the image of Metroboard in a DC Metro station below, where it's dark and the leakage issues are more apparent.

Additionally, the original 3D-printed parts were never intended for mass production and this specific design wasn’t compatible with injection molding, the standard method for manufacturing plastic parts.

From a design perspective, the light pipe intrusion on the surface of the aluminum panel was crude when looked at closely (not smooth, didn't fill the entire hole in the panel).

Our solution has been a combination of what we call a "Light Shield" - an opaque sheet that prevents light leakage between adjacent LED's - and replacing the light pipes with resin applied to the sheet metal holes.

This solution worked perfectly (!), and is well-optimized for mass production.

Light from each LED is blocked from adjacent LEDs and lights up only its corresponding piece of resin on the top face. Visually, the resin is incredibly smooth and fills out the entire milled hole for an incredibly high quality finish. 

Above is a preview of light as seen through the resin. Overall it's quite good, but we noted that the light shows more as a "point" rather than filling up the entire circle for even illumination. 

Our partner is adding a diffusion powder to the resin mix that should facilitate improved distribution of the light and even this out. 

Updated Rear Buttons

Our initial design used rectangular, metallic buttons on the rear. We updated this design to feature square, plastic keys for the following reasons:

• Sound – The metal-on-metal contact created a tinny, clacking noise.
• Stability – The larger rectangular shape was oversized relative to the switch, which caused them to be unstable and "tilt" if not pressed directly in the center. The extra weight of the metal also contributed to this. 
• Fit & Manufacturing – Machining metal keycaps to match the MX switch pattern was challenging given the tight tolerances required, leading to poor fit. 
• Aesthetic & Cost – Without the bright and colorful LED array featured on the front panel, the back looked quite drab. We wanted to add color and contrast and the keys afforded us that opportunity. Since we’re painting the buttons, metal offered no advantage while being more expensive. 
• Smoother Actuation – Metal keycaps tended to catch on the panel when pressed, while plastic allows for a smoother keystroke.

The new keycaps are a pleasant rounded square shape, slightly larger than a standard keyboard key. The new design has the following advantages:

• Improved Actuation – The smaller, lighter design dramatically improves the actuation.
• Smoother Press – Plastic reduces friction against metal and prevents catching.
• Better Sound – Eliminates the tinny, clanky noise of metal keycaps.

For this prototype, we used multiple colors to reflect the Metroboard logo and reference subway line colors and iconography. We're also exploring a classic off-white color inspired by 1980's Braun designs and will decide between the two.

For some background on the color selection - we used an official Pantone color swatch and tested hundreds of reds, greens, yellows, blues, and oranges against the aluminum to arrive at this color-way. There's a lot of colors out there!

Antenna Update

Our prototypes had a hole cut out of the aluminum to allow the WiFi antenna to function. We've reduced the cutout in size and covered it with smoked plastic to act as a backlit status indicator.

We're pretty happy with this new antenna slot, and more than happy to proceed into production with it. However, before we do so, we will be making an attempt to test an antenna that is applied to an internal side of the walnut frame rather than facing straight up through the aluminum.

This has the benefit of allowing us to remove the cutout entirely on the front, leading to a much sleeker design. Our partner will be doing a quick check of this and comparing the WiFi performance between the two options to determine if it's a suitable alternative. 

Updating & Finalizing Maps

Exactly 100 of you took us up on our request for review of the Metroboard maps, providing over 600 total comments with feedback on everything from missing lights to station naming, geographic accuracy, track bends, and more.

We reviewed all 600 comments (found here for those interested) and surgically tweaked all six Metroboard maps with your suggestions in mind. 

We'll be sharing all six final maps in next week's update!

Other Minor Updates

We've removed the two additional cutouts in the rear panel that were initially meant for a secondary wall-mounting device we planned to include with Metroboard. 

These holes were redundant and we found the picture hook alone to be satisfactory (and even better) for hanging than the tool we planned to make. Also, the panel looks better without the additional cutouts!

The rear panel has been thickened (to 2.5mm from 1mm) to allow us to sink the screws flush for a more polished look. Separately, the added thickness eliminated minor tinny sounds from the keycaps entirely and gives the board a perfectly balanced, premium feel.

Next Steps

Our manufacturing partner is currently on holiday for Lunar New Year (happy new year to all who celebrate!) and will be returning 2/10. In the meantime, we are doing all of the work we can on our end so that we hit the ground running when they get back. 

Once they return, these will be the next steps that are taken:

1) Finalizing Key Details

We identified a few minor adjustments during our visit will be addressed quickly:

• Standardizing the final aluminum anodization to ensure consistent color
• Fixing minor alignment and fit issues between components during assembly
• Defining acceptable walnut color, finish, and grain for uniformity
• Adding diffusion powder to the resin and verifying even LED lighting
• Creating a precision tool for aligning the map with panel holes
• Testing WiFi antenna relocation to the side of the frame

We expect these to all be more or less resolved within one week.

2) Producing All City Prototypes

So far, we’ve prototyped only Los Angeles with our partner, as the process is identical for the other five cities. Once the final adjustments are complete, we’ll create pre-production prototypes for all six cities as the last step of verification before beginning mass production.

These pre-production prototypes will use the same tooling, molds, production equipment, and process as the mass production run, ensuring everything runs smoothly before we step into mass production in earnest. This allows us to verify the entire process operates without kinks and the resulting final product quality is to our standards.

The tooling and molds for plastic components are large hardened steel blocks, which need to be precision-machined. This process takes about 4-6 weeks. Below is an example of these molds.

While these get made, however, we will proceed to prepare all of the other (non-plastic) components such as sheet metal, circuit-boards, frames, etc., so that when the tooling is ready we will be able to quickly assemble the prototypes and verify readiness.

3) FCC Testing

All products sold in the US require FCC certification, which is a set of electrical and wireless tests that ensure the product doesn't interfere with other devices. 

We will do this testing as soon as have a "final" version of the product since changes can affect the behavior in the test. We hope to do this while the tooling is being made to avoid any schedule impact. Worst-case, it'll add 1-2 weeks after tooling to complete this test for all six Metroboards.

4) Mass Production

It's showtime, baby! With all above steps completed, we'll mass produce all 6,000 Metroboards you ordered, estimated to take about 6-8 weeks. 

After they're completed, we'll ship them on a container ship to LA and then truck them to a fulfillment warehouse (probably in the central US) where they'll be packed and shipped to you. 

This puts us roughly at mid-June to begin shipping them out.

Final Thoughts

If you read through this whole post - wow! Thanks for your diligent review and interest, and we hope we answered a lot of your questions. If you have any more, please e-mail us ([email protected]) or comment and we'd be more than happy to answer them. 

This was our first update on Metroboard production since the campaign because we wanted to wait until we had made substantial progress to share with you. Now that we're entering the final stretch, we hope to provide updates more regularly since there will be more happening.

Expect updates approximately every two weeks for Metroboard, and potentially more updates in-between for bits on the trading cards and City Sounds.

Kirill + Emily

Production Updates! (Week 2: City Sounds Vinyl)
about 2 months ago – Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 05:51:15 AM

Hi all! This update is coming to you from Shenzhen, where we're visiting our manufacturing partner and reviewing Metroboard prototypes! Our next update will be all about Metroboard production, stay tuned! :-)

For this update, we'll be giving you a sneak peak into the progress for the City Sounds vinyl record which is really coming together. We hope you enjoy! 

City Sounds Track sneak-peaks

For those who aren't familiar (or forgot), City Sounds is a 6-track album that blends field recordings from subway systems, buses, and city streets with original ambient audio inspired by the musical history and energy of the respective cities. 

Each track is approximately six minutes, with one track per Metroboard City: Los Angeles, Bay Area, Chicago, Boston, D.C., and New York. Dozens of you have submitted recordings from your commutes and time in the cities that may appear in the tracks. 

For this update, we're providing sneak peaks of the Chicago, Bay Area, and Boston tracks. These are just a portion of the full tracks and are still drafts, so expect changes - but we're stoked about how it's coming together :-)

Here's a note from our incredibly talented artist and producer on the Chicago track's musical genealogy:

... I’d like to pay homage to the birth of house music (which took place in Chicago in the early 80s) largely shepherded by Frankie Knuckles, to the modern Chicago hip-hop scene (noname, Saba, etc) and to the experimental spirit of the city’s music scene in general... these are really subtle homages. There are some very recognizable gestures/components of in Chicago electronic music (piano/deep house synth chord stabs, a little bit of swing on the 808 drum machine, a vocal sample from old Motown or soul records, cross-rhythms which can be traced all the way back to Caribbean dance music which made its way up the Mississippi delta into Appalachia in the 16-1800s and later Chicago/the Midwest during the first Great Migration in the US in the early 1900s). The rhythmic stuff is already in the track, but the piano chords/vocal sample stuff I’d like to add will be in the next version. 

Album Artwork

Besides the music, we're also working on artwork for the album! This is what'll appear on the record sleeve when the vinyl ships and later be shown on Spotify and other streaming services when the album eventually goes digital.

We're super excited to be partnering with a talented visual artist to create the piece. We're honing in on colors, composition and general ~vibe right now, but we'll share the full album art when it's ready.

Ordering City Sounds

If you already ordered City Sounds as part of your Kickstarter pledge or later when you filled out your survey, thank you! We're really excited to share the final product with you.

If you didn't order City Sounds but are interested after reading this post, you're certainly welcome to! It's available for $25. See below for details on how to do so.

• If you've submitted your survey already, send us an email at [email protected] so we can "unlock" your survey. After that, you can add City Sounds to your order. We'll explain what to do in our response to your e-mail. 
• If you've not submitted your survey, you can add City Sounds when submitting it.
• If you're not a backer, you can order City Sounds directly via this link.

Production Updates! (Week 1: Trading Cards)
2 months ago – Wed, Jan 08, 2025 at 12:23:29 PM

Happy New Year! 🥳 🥂 🎇

Hope you all had a great holiday season - to celebrate 2025, we'll be sharing production updates on Metroboard, Trading Cards, and the City Sounds vinyl over the next few weeks with you all! See below:

Trading Cards: Big update below!
City Sounds Vinyl: Update next week with sneak peaks! :-)
Metroboard: Update in two weeks when we visit our manufacturing factory!

Trading Cards enter Production!

We've put in the order for the production of our trading cards! This should take approximately 30 days, after which they'll be freighted across the Pacific, which can take around 15 more days. We'll be holding onto these until they ship along with your Metroboards!

We sampled cards from four different manufacturers to make our final selection. For each of these, we reviewed the card samples for:

• Color quality (is it vibrant, does it match our designs?)
• 3D lenticular effect quality
• Rear side effect (texture and holographic lines)
• Overall build/construction quality and thickness

After reviewing the samples, we weeded out the manufacturers whose cards were too thin/flimsy, had poor color representation, or low quality construction.

We initially were pursuing a full "shimmer" effect on the rear side. These looked good, but we were particularly impressed with one vendor who created an embossed line effect using a textured material and printing method for the back that produced a raised surface and inset design and text elements. 

Don't worry, we kept some of the sparkle - the cards are still shimmery in the heading and our logo, and there's a subtle (but tasteful!) glow on all of the other printed areas. We think you're gonna love it!

Next Week: sneak peak of City Sounds tracks.