Stylogeny combining London Transport Design × Plakatstil

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Style combination · Contrasts

London Transport Design × Plakatstil

The Sachplakat reduced every poster to one object and a brand name, while Pick let each artist choose a different picture inside a fixed frame; use the contrast to decide between one formula and a curated plurality.

From the research on London Transport Design

Mix them and make something London Transport Design Plakatstil

GRIDLondon Transport × Plakatstil1908 · 1905
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from London Transport Design, their arrangement from Plakatstil, the finish from Plakatstil. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

London Transport Design Plakatstil / Sachplakat

Type from London Transport Design
Colour from Plakatstil
Form from London Transport Design
Composition from Plakatstil
Surface from Plakatstil

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The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · London Transport Design

Grid

Fira Sans, standing in for Edward Johnston's Underground sans (1916): two weights, ordinary and a capitals-only bold, with capitals on Roman square-capital proportions and diagonally set square dots on i and j; condensed letters followed for bus destination displays

Text · Plakatstil

The German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt. It strips the advertisement to a single product rendered in flat, saturated colour and the brand name in bold hand-drawn letters on a plain ground, so the message registers instantly from a passing tram or across the street.

Oswald; Plakatstil used Lucian Bernhard's hand-drawn block lettering and Block

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The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Plakatstil, with a counter-accent from London Transport Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

London Transport Design Plakatstil / Sachplakat

  • #151515 ground · 36%
  • #efe5cf ink · 14%
  • #d2382b accent · 18%
  • #e3b23c accent · 14%
  • #24418f accent · 10%
  • #2f5d3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #151515;
  --ink: #efe5cf;
  --accent-1: #d2382b;
  --accent-2: #e3b23c;
  --accent-3: #24418f;
  --accent-4: #2f5d3a;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

London Transport Design: The roundel is a registered trade mark of Transport for London, which licenses it: draw your own emblem rather than reproducing it. New Johnston, used exclusively by TfL, and its 2016 successor Johnston100, which TfL commissioned from Monotype, are TfL's corporate typefaces; Johnston's 1916 design has been out of copyright since 2015, and for the historic letter use P22 Underground, the revival the London Transport Museum licensed to P22, or another humanist sans, not TfL's fonts. Some commissions served empire, such as Bawden's poster for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, which the V&A describes as imperial propaganda that included human displays; do not reuse that imagery as neutral nostalgia.

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The two styles

1908–1966 · Western Europe London Transport Design The design programme Frank Pick built for London's Underground from 1908 and the London Passenger Transport Board (1933–40), continued by Harold Hutchison (1947–66). Fixed elements recurred across stations, notices and maps: Edward Johnston's humanist sans (1916), the red-ring-and-blue-bar roundel and Harry Beck's diagram (1933). Pick, an admirer of Morris and Lethaby, carried the craft ideal of 'fitness for purpose' into transport. Around those constants he commissioned lithographed posters from many artists, Kauffer, Bawden and Man Ray among them: varied art in one consistent system. A tall, slender red-orange dog stands facing right against a black background, with angular black cutouts defining its features and limbs. Large cream capital letters spell “VELOX” beneath its paws. 1905–1920 · Central Europe Plakatstil / Sachplakat The German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt. It strips the advertisement to a single product rendered in flat, saturated colour and the brand name in bold hand-drawn letters on a plain ground, so the message registers instantly from a passing tram or across the street.

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More combinations

With London Transport Design

All 11 combinations with London Transport Design

With Plakatstil

All 12 combinations with Plakatstil

Every style combination