There has been many a time that I've been stumbling half-lost through an unfamiliar part of London when I have spied the reassuring shape of the London Underground roundel and suddenly all felt right in the world. Not only does that bullseye signify the ability of the Tube to get me anywhere in the city I desire, but also the logo itself, a hundred years old this fall, is a small miracle of modern graphic design. If you click on the picture at right you can just make out the original roundel as it existed in 1910, before transport manager Frank Pick commissioned calligrapher Edward Johnston to tweak it slightly until by 1917 it had morphed into the form that is still used today. Jonathan Glancey declares it a certified classic of everyday design:
The roundel is a fine example of a logo or corporate symbol that has
evolved over a long time while remaining one of the most effective, and
popular, in use anywhere in the world today. The fact that it enters
its second century in the spirit of creative art would have pleased its
original creators no end. Pick wanted London's public transport system
to be as much a work of civic art, and an inspiration everyone using
it, as a quick, cheap and reliable method of getting from A to B - or,
indeed, Amersham to Brixton.
The roundel was incorporated into Charles Holden's gorgeous Art Deco Tube stations in the 1920s, like the building at Arnos Grove, and also into the lust-worthy transport posters for which London remains famous. Glancey talked in a previous article on the remodeled London Transport Museum about how Pick was again a visionary in the visual arena:
Pick wanted his organisation to be more than well run. He began with
the commissioning of posters in 1908; as he gained confidence, he began
touring colleges of art and commercial design, looking for the best new
talent. Of course, some duds got through. But what impresses, even
today, is the originality, energy and life of these eye-catching
designs, from such talents as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Hans Schleger
and Man Ray.
That Man Ray is a particular beaut, though I'm pretty fond of the Kauffer images too. All can be examined (and purchased) on the Transport Museum's Web site. You will probably at this point be unsurprised to hear that Pick was also responsible for another icon of the Underground, the map. From an appreciative editorial in the Guardian:
Later he commissioned the diagrammatic tube map designed by Harry Beck,
based on a circuit board and still in use in London, New York and
Sydney. When the tube expanded in the 1930s, it was Pick who led
expeditions to Europe to study modernism and returned to decree that
every aspect of the new stations, down to the litter bins, should
"conform with the architecture scheme". He left his imprint on
everything from bus stops to tube trains, and happily it lingers still.
Thank you, Frank Pick, for being the instigator of some of my favorite designs in the entire world. For a nifty photographic tour through the many decades of the Underground roundel's history, please click through to the gallery here.