When many artists want to see their work, they can take the subway to the closest station and walk to the gallery or museum. Unlike most artists, Sophie Ong, also known as Zovi, typically doesn’t have to leave the station, or even the subway car, to see her work on display.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is her Met; the subway is the showcase for her work, seen by millions in stations and on the subway itself. If you ride the subway, you’ve seen her work, even if it’s unlikely you knew her name. For New York City’s most moving art, just look at subway cars, as well as stations.
“That’s my work seen the most,” Ong said recently of her illustrations for “Don’t be Someone’s Subway Story,” possibly one of the highest profile campaigns in New York City history. “A lot of people were happy this campaign was up.”
Ong’s work is part of an award-winning “Courtesy Counts” campaign by the MTA using art to convey a serious message.
MTA Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said there are about 6 million daily users across the system. The campaign is on 10,000 screens in subway cars and stations, as well as buses, the LIRR and Metro North.
“We launched the campaign back in October of 2023,” said Gene Ribeiro, Deputy Chief Customer Officer, who leads Marketing and Creative Services. “Clearly, the content we are communicating remains at the forefront of customers’ minds.”
Rather than simply posting signs advising straphangers to be courteous, the MTA decided to get its message across with humor and art.
“We took a bit of a tongue-in-cheek approach to speak to serious issues that customers see on a daily basis,” Ribeiro said. “We were looking to communicate in less of a heavy-handed way.”
Rieara said that the illustration creates a fun feel to convey an important message. “It’s a cartoon, bright and different from what the MTA historically has put out,” she said. “It has drawn eyes and attention to the campaign.
The “Courtesy Counts” campaign, among the most looked at (if sometimes overlooked) art, won the 2024 APTA AdWheel Award for Best Marketing and Communications Education Initiative – Comprehensive Campaign. It won first place for illustration in the 2024 PRINT awards.
Although the New York City subway system is about transporting people, it is also a venue where artwork reaches millions.
In addition to mosaics, sculpture and other artifacts, it’s the home to illustrations designed to convey various messages.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has designers, 3D animators and video editors on staff with Ong as a full-time illustrator.
Ong draws everything from the “Don’t Be Someone’s Subway Story” courtesy campaign to other illustrations for the MTA.
Ricky Sethiady led direction, with copywriting by Chris Sartinsky, design and motion by John Wong, and illustration by Ong, AKA Zovi. “We call them a courtesy campaign,” Ong said. “They’re not rules. It’s baseline respect.”
Campaign images have sought to encourage people not to hold doors open, not put bags on seats and otherwise respect space. “When it first came up, people looked at them and commented, pointed at them,” Ong said. “Now people are so used to them. They just see them.”
Ribeiro said the MTA started over five years ago with a well-received courtesy campaign using “bubble people.” “We wanted to take that version and expand on it and make it a conversation piece,” he said. “How did we select the respective scenarios? A combination of customer feedback and our own daily interactions. We all take the subway and bus system.”
One subway passenger in a car filled with these images recently looked up from his phone, taking in the art and text. “I think it’s good,” said one Manhattan resident seated beneath various cartoons from the campaign. “I never noticed it before.”
Ong’s work for the MTA has turned the trains into a kind of modern museum for her images. “It’s kind of like my gallery,” she said.
Born in Grenoble, in the Southern Alps, she left France at age 17 for China, in large part because her father is of Chinese Cambodian descent. She moved to China in 2010 and stayed a decade.
“That’s where I started doing illustration professionally,” Ong said. “I started doing fliers, then live illustration. I went to a conference, a meeting, a summit. It was exciting, dynamic, also frustrating and kind of confusing. There were double standards about being a foreigner there.”
In 2020, she flew to New York to visit a New Yorker she had met while living in Shanghai, arriving just before COVID hit. “I landed in New York City. My plane back to China was cancelled,” said Ong. “I stayed. I could sense it would be complicated to cross borders.”
She married and one day met a product manager for the MTA who saw some of her work and suggested she apply for a job. “It was serendipitous,” she said.
Ong started working for the MTA in 2021 as a contractor and then an employee. She goes over ideas with the writer, does sketches on paper, then gives options on her iPad or Cintiq as part of a much larger team.
“The courtesy campaign will have many iterations,” Rieara said. We are creating a shortlist of new behaviors to weave into a new campaign. She said employees as well as straphangers make suggestions as to panels that could be added.
Ong has been adding fine art to the mix of her work. “I picked up paint brushes and got inspired by friends,” she said. “I enjoy it.”
She had her first fine art show, appropriately enough, in Grand Central in Café Grumpy. “They have a location near my job,” she said. “Half of my paintings have found homes.”
She has done work at Time to Be Happy art gallery where her paintings have been on display. She signs her fine art, but her work for the MTA is an expression of her individual point of view through an institutional lens.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Why is your name not on it?” she said. “That’s how it is, but I’m fine with it.”
Ribeiro said the campaign seems to have won over fans. “It was very well received and is award-winning,” he said, noting people can send suggestions for the campaign through social media.
