Presentation Notes

Presentation notes:

London Underground

·      Always been interested in it

·      Tube map is my favourite piece of design

History

·      Recently celebrated 150 years in service

·      First line was built in 1863 – The Metropolitan line which ran from Paddington to Farrington

Second World War

·      Used as air-raid shelters in the Second World War

·      Children slept in hammocks between the lines

Cut and cover method

·      Streets were dug up

·      Tracks were laid

·      Tunnel built around it

·      Road replaced

·      Very few of these tunnels have needed extensive re-building

The First tube map

·      Designed in 1908 by the UERL (Underground electric railways company of London) and four other companies who had lines within the underground

·      People found it very confusing and hard to read

Harry Beck

·      A young engineer who identified the problems with the tube map and, in his spare time he drew out his own version of the map

·      His interpretation was well ahead of its time

·      He straightened out the lines and experimented with diagonals to keep it simple and easy to navigate

Harry’s tube map

·      Very important piece of design and became a template for other tube maps globally

The most recent map

·      Beck was not always the lead designer, over the years there have been many different people who have added their own ideas to the map

·      Though this has happened, Beck’s design is still very prominent today

Typeface

·      Designed by Edward Johnston, typeface was called Johnston

·      He had some assistance from his student Eric Gill who later developed some of the ideas and created Gill Sans

·      Edward only drew one weight for his font and felt very strongly about having only one

·      When one of his other students agreed to produce Bold Capitals Edward did not speak to him for several decades

·      In 1979 the London transport contacted Banks and Miles design agency to revise and revive the typeface

·      They re-drew the proportions for better display and created 2 new weights but also italics for the full set

Target audience

·      Commuters in London

·      Tourists – Language barriers

·      These barriers were tested further during the 2012 Olympic games where 60 million journeys were made on the underground

·      It has been reported that the tube map performed very well during the games, with very few problems