Stylogenyin the style of London Transport Design

Rational modernism · 1908–1966 · Western Europe

London Transport Design

Also known as Frank Pick's Underground, Underground Group publicity, LPTB 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.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

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.

01

How it works

  • Fix a few constants (one typeface, one emblem, one map, a handful of colours) and carry them through everything the public sees, from timetables and posters to the station buildings.
  • Letter everything in a calm humanist sans drawn on the proportions of Roman square capitals, set station names in capitals, and break with the squarer commercial sans-serifs, so that the network's own notices are never mistaken for advertisements.
  • Let the emblem do the signage: Johnston's red ring (opened from the solid red disc of 1908) crossed by a blue bar carrying the station name in capitals, repeated along every platform.
  • Map the network as a diagram, not a geography: only horizontals, verticals and 45-degree diagonals, one colour per line, ticks for stations and a separate mark for interchanges.
  • Commission pictorial posters from many artists and let each choose the idiom (country landscape, cubist fragmentation, flat lithographic colour, a Surrealist photogram); the fixed system around them holds the variety together.
  • Treat architecture as part of the graphic system: build the roundel and the lettering into plain brick, glass and concrete stations.

London: the Underground Electric Railways Company of London under Frank Pick (publicity officer from 1908, commercial manager from 1912, joint managing director from 1928), then the London Passenger Transport Board, where Pick was chief executive and vice-chairman from 1933 to 1940; after the war Harold Hutchison, London Transport's publicity officer from 1947 (the post had been left vacant since 1941) to 1966, resumed commissioning artists and made the pair poster his format, one sheet for the artist's image and one mostly for London Transport's text

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Eclectic mixing, Blackletter, Experimental & distorted, Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Horror vacui, Rebellious & subversive

Palette

  • #f4f1e8
  • #d0352b
  • #1f3a93
  • #00782a
  • #1c1c1c
  • #d9a441

Typefaces

  • 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

  • Poster artists' own hand-drawn lettering on lithographed pictorial posters

  • Gill Sans (Eric Gill, Monotype, from 1928), modelled on the Johnston alphabet Gill had worked on

  • Later revisions for the same system

    New Johnston (Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles, 1979) and Johnston100 (Monotype for Transport for London, 2016)

Known for

  • Edward Johnston, the Underground's sans-serif alphabet, commissioned by Pick in 1913 and introduced in 1916; pen-and-ink design for the lettering, 1916 (V&A E.47-1936, given by the London Passenger Transport Board)

  • The bar-and-circle roundel

    a solid red disc behind station names from 1908; redesigned by Johnston from 1916 as an open red ring crossed by a bar, after the London General Omnibus Company's ring-and-bar sign, first used in 1919, its dimensions standardised by the 1920s and built into Holden's station architecture of the 1920s and early 1930s

  • Harry Beck, London Underground diagram, sketched in 1931 and issued by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, colour lithograph printed by Waterlow & Sons (V&A E.816-1979; original sketch E.814-1979)

  • Edward McKnight Kauffer, 'Oxhey Woods' and 'In Watford'

    (a bridge over the River Colne), country scenes in colour lithograph issued by the Underground in 1915, the year of his first commission from Pick (V&A E.4278-1915 and E.4279-1915); the V&A's record calls 'Oxhey Woods' a derivation of post-impressionism, and Eye traces his early style to the posters of Ludwig Hohlwein he had seen in Munich

  • Edward McKnight Kauffer, 'Winter Sales Are Best Reached By Underground' (1922, V&A E.629-1923) and 'Power, the Nerve Centre of London's Underground' (1930, V&A E.3338-1932), from some 140 posters he made for the Underground and London Transport, from 1915 until he left for New York in 1940

  • Edward Bawden with Thomas Derrick, 'To Wembley', a map poster commissioned by Frank Pick for the British Empire Exhibition

    1924, V&A E.277-2000

  • Man Ray, 'London Transport' and 'Keeps London Going', a pair of photo-lithographed posters, one showing Saturn and a roundel against a night sky (1938, London Transport Museum 1983/4/5186 and 1983/4/5189), his only London Transport commission

  • Charles Holden, 55 Broadway headquarters (1927-29) and the Piccadilly line stations at Sudbury Town (1931) and Arnos Grove

    1932

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from London Transport Design’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleLondon Transport Design1908–1966 · Western Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. V&A, Harry Beck, London Underground Map, 1933, E.816-1979: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O138692/
  2. V&A, Edward Johnston, design for lettering, 1916, E.47-1936: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1025234/
  3. V&A, Edward Bawden and Thomas Derrick, To Wembley, 1924, E.277-2000: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O56605/
  4. V&A, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Winter Sales Are Best Reached By Underground, 1922, E.629-1923: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O771686/
  5. V&A, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Power, the Nerve Centre of London's Underground, 1930, E.3338-1932: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070931/
  6. V&A, Tom Eckersley, Conducted Tours By London Transport, 1956, E.506-1985: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O540505/
  7. V&A, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Oxhey Woods, 1915, E.4278-1915: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O708137/, and In Watford, 1915, E.4279-1915: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O708136/
  8. V&A, William Roberts, London's Fairs, 1951, E.458-1951: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O594454/, and E.458A-1951: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O594495/
  9. London Transport Museum, Man Ray, 'Keeps London going' poster, 1938, 1983/4/5189: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/posters/item/1983-4-5189, and 'London Transport', 1983/4/5186: https://ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/posters/item/1983-4-5186
  10. Bryars & Bryars, The man who sacked Harry Beck: rethinking Harold Hutchison: https://bryarsandbryars.co.uk/blogs/maps/the-man-who-sacked-harry-beck-rethinking-harold-hutchison
  11. Eye magazine, Infiltrating the avant-garde into British posters: https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/infiltrating-the-avant-garde-into-british-posters
  12. TfL Corporate Archives, The Roundel (Google Arts & Culture): https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mAURyS1LrB2vxw
  13. Wikipedia: Frank Pick; Johnston (typeface); Tube map; London Transport (brand); 55 Broadway; Edward Johnston; Edward McKnight Kauffer; Arnos Grove tube station; Design and Industries Association
  14. Michael T. Saler, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground (Oxford University Press, 1999)
  15. Christian Barman, The Man Who Built London Transport: A Biography of Frank Pick (David & Charles, 1979)

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