Hasta La Ideas

Say it Underground with a poster, Christopher Greaves, 1933

To mark the Underground’s 150th birthday, an exhibition at the London Transport Museum presents150 of the most significant posters created for the tube. Within this history of London Underground posters lies the history of the poster itself.

From the purely typographic examples of the late 19th century, through the first illustrated tube poster in 1908, through the golden age of the 20s and 30s to the modern techniques of advertising, London Underground’s output traces the development of visual communications in the modern world. The task of selecting 150 key examples of that output, out of some 3,000 illustrated posters in the archives, was given to a panel of eight experts including representatives of TFL, the Victoria & Albert Museum, artist Simon Patterson, whose Great Bear piece so cleverly reworked the iconic tube map, Paul Rennie of Central St Martins and designer Brian Webb.

The Museum created a longlist, printed out at A4 size in a ringbinder given to each panellist. It was agreed that the final 150 should attempt to represent the history of LU in its entirety and resist the temptation to let the 20s and 30s dominate. Many old favourites are there, but there are some surprises too.

Curator Anna Renton has organised the chosen works into six sections, themed around different aspects of LU and its operations. The first section in the show (Finding Your Way) is all about posters aimed at reassuring the travelling public that the tube is a safe, pleasant place. Here we find classics such as Alfred France’s The Way For All (above) in which a smiling, behatted young lady assures us that the tube is a respectable choice for the women of 1911, while in Horace Taylor’s Brightest London (below) a glamorous crowd (including the artist himself, on the middle escalator, in beard and top hat) happily uses the then-modern innovation of escalators.

And we see the first poster to be commissioned by the great Frank Pick, whose management did so much to establish London Transport at the forefront of great design. In it, a kindly policeman refers a nervous country couple to the tube map as the only guide they will need to the system.

No Need To Ask A P’liceman, the first illustrated poster commissioned by the Underground Group, John Hassall, 1908

Smoking cars were available on the tube until 1984, although not as sumptuous as in Frederick Charles Herrick’s The Lap Of Luxury from 1925

Early tube posters often cast the system in favourable comparison to alternative methods of transportation on the surface: It is warmer below and It is cooler below, Frederick Charles Herrick, 1926

Passengers are unable to resist the Lure Of The Underground, Alfred Leete,1927

Later sections deal with behaviour, such as standing on the right on escalators and not crowding entrances to platforms, the cultural delights that the tube allows access to, with the attractions of outlying suburbs which extensions to the network brought within easy reach of all Londoners, the tube’s role in keeping London moving and, finally, the pride in the city it helps engender. What comes through in the show is that, although the posters themselves were often truly beautiful, and many of them very abstract, they all had a specific communications task to perform: they were not just art for art’s sake.

So-called panel posters were cheaply-produced mini-posters which were pasted directly onto the windows of trains. Many were used to advertise sporting events, such as The Quickest Way To The Dogs by Alfred Leete, 1927

More posters were commissioned promoting the zoo than anyother subject, including this surreal effort Zoo Choice, by Michael Read, 1970

Man Ray’s twin posters from 1938, shown for the first time as a pair in the exhibition

The pair poster became more popular after world war two when Harold F Hutchison became publicity officer for London Transport. A copywriter by trade, Hutchison introduced pairs whereby one side would be predominantly image-based and the other used for long copy. These posters were particularly useful in outlying stations where passengers may have to wait longer for a train and so have more time to read. The poster pair shown is by James Fitton, 1948

The tube poster as propaganda: During the first world war, the Underground commissioned a series of propaganda posters which were displayed in army billets on the Western Front to remind soldiers of what they were fighting for. Fred Taylor, 1918. Note the sheep grazing on Hampstead Heath, something which only happened during wartime

Dora M Batty was one of the most prolific tube poster designers. Primarily a fashion illustrator, many of her posters are distinguished by the rendering of her subjects’ clothing as in There Is Still The Country from 1926

Each of the members of the selection panel for the exhibition were asked to pick a personal favourite. Brian Webb chose Edward McKnight Kauffer’s Winter Sales from 1921. Webb says that he would cheerfully have chosen nothing but Kauffer posters for the show, so much does he admire him, but that this particular work stood out for its abstract nature. Kauffer created more posters for London Transport (127) than any other designer

Waterside London, designed by Hans Unger in 1972, was the choice of Michael Walton, who is head of trading at the London Transport Museum

Oliver Green, research fellow at the London Transport Museum, chose Thanks To The Underground by Zero (Hans Schleger), from 1935

The show, though packed into quite a cramped space, really is spectacular. It’s only by seeing these original posters ‘in the flesh’ that you can fully appreciate what extraordinary pieces of design many of them are. And what fabulous tributes to the printer’s art – the likes of Curwen Press used these posters as a showcase for their own skills. The colours, even today, are extraordinarily rich – in a less image-saturated age, their impact when placed in dim tunnels and on smoky platforms must have been extraordinary.

Poster Art 150 – London Underground’s Greatest Designs is at the London Transport Museum until October 27, ltmuseum.co.uk. Visitors will be able to vote for their favourite poster in the Siemens Poster Vote

Al images courtesy London Transport Museum Collection.

The March print issue of Creative Review is dedicated to the visual communications of the London Underground, with features on the roundel, posters, the Johnston typeface, station graphics and much much more. Out February 20, available here

CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Turn your Facebook profile into a personalised monster, with The Creators Project’s new series of online 3D-printing apps. Plus our round-up of more data-to-3D-printing ideas

The Creators Project, in association with Vice, have launched a series of web apps that allow you to turn your Facebook user data into a 3D printed sculpture. The three different apps offer different final sculptures, and you can use your data to created a personalised monster, a rock crystal, or an astrological horoscope. After you’ve gone through the various online stages, your sculpture is printed by Shapeways, and sent to you.

There are three different experiences to choose from: Monster Me, Crystallized and Astroverb. Monster Me features characters created by the South Korean Sticky Monster Lab, and uses your various Facebook likes to build up a monster caricature. There’s the added option of ‘growing’ your monster by posting to your Facebook timeline, and you can also add buildings that correspond to your various interests.

The Crystallized web app generates a crystal using your Facebook friend data, with each point of the crystal representing a friend, and your relationship with them.

Once your crystal has been generated, there’s the option to add friends to it, as well as change the colours before it’s printed.

Astroverb creates a personalised horoscope, which ‘analyses your profile to reveal your destiny’.

This isn’t the first time 3D printing has been used to transform data into a physical product. Design agency Sapient Nitro send out personalised 3D-printed Christmas stars last year, using the receiver’s Facebook data to determine the sizes and lengths of each of the points of the star.

3D production company, Inition, also used data to create a 3D printed sculpture, in a project for Manor House Development Trust. The final result used data taken from an online questionnaire, and featured a forest made up of more than 400 3D-printed trees, with each tree corresponding to an individual answer.

‘People Wood?’ 3D Printed Info-sculpture Forest from Inition on Vimeo.

Product design studio Shapes in Play have also been using 3D-printing to turn infographics into sculptures that demonstrate the energy content and CO2 equivalent of different dishes of food.

And last year, Realitat used 3D-printing to create microsonic landscapes – sculptural forms created using data from albums by various artists. Shown below are representations of Portishhead and Nick Drake albums.

You may also remember the 3D photobooth, set up in Omote in Tokyo by Japanese agency Party, which turned full-body scans of people into miniature printed versions.

And last year we also wrote about designer Matthew Plummer-Fernandez’s 3D-printed glitch tea set, which took scans of non-matching tea cups and saucers, and recreated a glitchy printed version of the originals.

In the poster for this year’s Oscars ceremony, the famous statuette has been recast by illustrator Olly Moss to reference every Best Picture winner from the last 85 years

Moss says the brief (which came via Gallery 1988) was one of the hardest he has ever had. He had to come up with a suitable pose for each Best Picture-winner, from Wings to The Artist (cleverly depicted in black and white).

The poster is full of nice touches – the image above shows the roll call of winners from 1958 (Gigi) to 1985 (Out of Africa). For Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960, top row, third from left) Moss recalls Jack Lemmon’s habit of using a tennis racket to strain spaghetti, while the Artful Dodger represents Oliver! (far left, middle row).

The Apartment (1960) and Deer Hunter (1978) as depicted by Olly Moss

“It’s all just drawn with a Wacom in Photoshop,” Moss says. “I made standard templates for male/female/child and then drew the extra details over the top. The statuette template I made was based on the huge statue they wheel out for the ceremony every year. It’s a little more refined than the award so it withstood a bit more detail/ customisation.”

“Gallery 1988 ran the campaign. I’ve shown there and worked with them before on this sort of thing. They hired me to do this poster. The brief was tough – it was pretty open with the one caveat that I had to somehow reference all of, or most, of the Best Picture Winners from the past 85 years.”

How long did it all take? “A bloody long time!” Moss says “I was working 16 hour days for about three weeks solid. I was on schedule before my computer died in mid January, which ballsed things up a tad.”

Moss says the hardest film to come up with an idea for was 1947-winner Gentleman’s Agreement. “If you haven’t seen it, it’s a film about a man disguising himself as a Jew to experience/uncover prejudice. Quite a hard thing to sum up sensitively on a 2″ tall statue.”

Favourites? “Hurt Locker was fun to do. I also like the one for The Greatest Show on Earth because I’m a big Jimmy Stewart fan and will happily take any excuse to draw him.”

The Hurt Locker (2009) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Illustration agents Dutch Uncle Tweeted what appeared to be a saucy new Time Out cover yesterday, created for the magazine’s new sex issue by illustrator Noma Bar. So it was much to our surprise that Time Out arrived in London this morning with a blank cover instead.

Shown above is what was purported to be Noma Bar’s intended sex issue cover, in all its naughty glory. However Time Out appear to have had a last-minute change of heart, instead running the below blank cover, underneath a cover wrap.

Noma Bar’s original cover illustration has been moved into a feature, with text overlayed.

Time Out say that the replacement blank cover is part of a #SexUpMyCover competition whereby readers are encouraged to doodle their very own naughty cover, which they can then Tweet. The best illustration, as judged by Time Out, will win an iPad mini, apparently. The Time Out team have kindly provided some examples of their work, to get people started.

According to Time Out’s editor Tim Arthur, on Twitter, the original design was moved to a feature to “give it the most impact”, and to allow Time Out to run their draw-your-own-cover competition. Hmm, or else someone got cold feet. The magazine is distributed at tube stations so perhaps it was felt that, despite the cover wrap, Bar’s image was just too much for the travelling public?

We have approached Time Out for comment, and will update the story as we know more.

CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Manchester agency True North has created a set of Royal Mail stamps, illustrated by Andy Kinsman, that celebrate eleven carefully chosen heroes of the British game…

“We were commissioned by Dean Price, design manager at Royal Mail to produce a set of stamps to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Football Association,” explains creative director Ady Bibby,” and which would celebrate the heroes of the British game. As a football mad agency, this really was a dream job.

“It became clear that we couldn’t suggest players simply based on the number of honours they achieved or the amount of goals they scored,” Bibby continues. “It was about their achievement on the pitch at both club and international level and also their place in the hearts of British football fans. The final list was decided by experts at the National Football Museum.

“We then scoured the archives to find images of the players in team photograph pose. We also wanted to reflect each player at their pomp. Some of the imagery was great quality, others images weren’t as good so we needed to commission an illustrator that could help us manipulate the ages of the players, and also ensure consistency across the painting. We commissioned Andy Kinsman who worked full-time on the painting (below) for six months.”

Credits
Creative director Ady Bibby, True North
Senior designer Adrian Newell, True North
Illustrator Andy Kinsman

More info on the set of stamps can be found at royalmail.com.

CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.