Hasta La Ideas

Graphic designer Tom Wood has created a series of ten designs that celebrate London Underground’s long closed and mostly forgotten stations…

2013 marks London Underground’s 150th anniversary and the world’s oldest underground transport system has seen some huge societal changes in its time. Ever-evolving demand has led to alterations, resulting in a number of disused stations across the network. The idea of Wood’s project, entitled Off The Map, is to commemorate some of these disused stations, including Aldwych, British Museum and Down Street.

“When I was eighteen, I remember looking out of the window on the Central Line and saw what looked like white tiles in the middle of the tunnel,” explains Wood of the origin of the project. “I was fascinated to later discover this was the rem ants of one of the many disused Tube stations, each of which has its own unique history.

“I wanted to create a brand and designs that would depict the mystery and intrigue that lies behind these lost underground worlds,” he continues. For example, the design for British Museum Station illustrates the glimpses of the famous classic platform tiling that can still be seen from passing Central Line trains. For Down Street, the design depicts its demise as a result of low passenger traffic due to more popular neighbouring stations.”

Each of the ten designs can be bought in a range of formats ranging from a postcard or greeting card through to three different poster formats from offthemap-london.com (screengrab shown above), with information about each station’s history detailed in each design’s accompanying text.

“These new designs commemorate what’s been ‘lost’, and for many what they never knew existed,” adds Wood.

offthemap-london.com

Further activity around the London Underground’s 150th anniversary includes an exhibition of London Underground poster art at the London Transport Museum (February 15 – October 2), and Penguin is set to publish a new book by Mark Ovenden later this month entitled London Underground By Design (£20).

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