Johnston 100 Posters

To celebrate 100 years of the iconic London Underground typeface, designed by Edward Johnston in 1916. Designers have been creating posters:

Johnston 100

To celebrate 100 years of the iconic London Underground typeface, designed by Edward Johnston in 1916

As with Pick’s original brief to Johnston, TfL’s brief to Monotype was simple to say but deceptively difficult to achieve: Ignore New Johnston. See if it is possible to go back to Johnston’s original typeface and work from that. Take it as the base, fill in the gaps and add then add the extra weights now needed to use Johnston effectively online, on mobile and elsewhere.

The results of Monotype’s effort is the newly-christened Johnston100 which has added two new weights, thin and extra thin and has a number of other technical tweaks that set the typeface up properly for modern usage. 

The johnston typeface presence expands beyond in stations to digital mediums including apps and social media, the updated typeface known as Johnston100 contains subtle changes to make it fit for purpose in the 21st century. This includes never-before designed symbols, such as # and @, which are now widely used in an environment where digital communications are as important as print.

Johnston100 Hairline and Johnston100 Extra-thin

Johnston100 Thin, Johnston100 Regular and Johnston100 Medium

Interestingly the biggest way in which the typeface had changed over the years, however, was in its width. The Monotype team discovered that, over the years, Johnston had gradually become narrower. The changes were always marginal and thus it wasn’t obvious from revision to revision. Comparing the current iteration of New Johnston with Edward Johnston’s original work though it was surprisingly clear that over the course of its hundred year history the difference was substantial. Johnston100 restores much of the original width, and the overlayed text below shows just how noticable the difference is.

Overlaying Johnston100 over New Johnston highlights the differences in character width. Notice the far wider ‘h’.

When looking and comparing the Johnston sans, New Johnson and Johnson 100 you can see the development in the design of from Johnson Sans typeface to the New Johnson typeface the developed  the x-height, width and height ratio, weight of the letters and default spacing between. Also  Eiichi Kono used the diamond shape for the punctuation for the New Johnston typeface. From the New Johnston typeface to the Johnston 100 typefaces has developed the weights of the letters similar to the Johnston sans typeface, the addition of new characters sure to social media developments with to use of the # and the @. Johnston 100 typeface kept the diamond shape for the punctuation.  

http://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/new-typeface-underground-johnston-100/

http://www.itsnicethat.com/features/monotype-johnston-100-tfl-130616

FMP - Research and Design Development

Follow the link to my Padlet page that I have created for both my Research and Design Development for my FMP. Click the link or scan the QR Code below....

Link Here

Sheffield Degree Show 2016

On Friday I attended the Sheffield Hallam Degree show which is open from the 10th of June to the 24th of June

After looking round the degree show it has really made want to go to university now. And confirmed my choice that I want to go to sheffield. Just need to crack on with my FMP and make sure I do enough work to ensure I get a Pass or above.

Contextual Studies

Throughout the year for the projects:

Propaganda

Alternative Miss World

Being Human

University

FMP

My research for the projects can be found within the label links for each of the section if the posts cannot be found within the contextual Studies label

Research can also be found within my sketch books and reflective practise books

FMP Cube Graphics

Contextual Presentation

For the contextual presentation, me and William was put together to produce a presentation to present our contextual information. 

My topic was Bauhaus
Williams topic was Swiss design 

For the presentation we used Adobe Experience Design (Preview) which we each gathered information for our chosen topic area. To gather our information together we used pallet Link to paddle can be found here

For the Swiss design will gathered all the images and created the graphics and the text for the swiss design, I gathered the images, text and graphics for the Bauhaus information and  the arrows and connected all the different slides of work together using the Adobe software using the different arrows graphics for the time lines.

By creating our presentation using Adobe Experience Design we can share the presentation online for people to view (http://adobe.ly/1XBQiDU)

Using an Apple device the viewer can save the website to the home screen of their device which it then acts like an mobile application 

Below is a video of us presenting the prevention to the group.

From the presentation we have had the feedback that it could possibly have some sort of background music.

That our prevention would be something that you would find in a museum when you want to find out more about the specific topic area.

Contextual Essay + Bibliography

Contextual Essay

Graphic design also known as communication design. The forms of communication can be physical or virtual and may include images, words, or graphic forms and the work can happen at any scale and form. For hundreds of years, graphic designers have arranged type, forms and images on posters, advertisements, packages and other printed matter, as well as information visualisations and graphics for newspapers and magazines. For my contextual essay, after my Alternative Miss World project using the theme of the London underground, I am going to focus my research on history behind London Underground branding of the London underground. I have chosen the London underground because I found the history behind the London underground inspiring making want to find out more on how the design for the London Underground was created.

In 1890 the first electric underground railway in Europe and in the city of London was completed. London Underground became one of the first dependable venue where modernist designers could find work. Modernist designers used used stylistic elements that was absorbed from the modern painting movements and, especially Cubism and Futurism within their work. However due to the daring nature of their style of work resulted in modernist designers in Europe being severely limited finding constant rewarding employment.

In 1900 the Central London railway opened under Oxford street which was one of the most successful lines on the central London railway because of its technological improvements. As a result, this made the railway safer and cheap to run. With it being cheap to run the users was changed two pennies, which is why the line was known as the ‘Twopenny Tube’ because of its price. A poster (Figure 1) trumpeting the rapid developments of the railway within the first decade of the twentieth centenary assured passengers that by using the Twopenny tube would avoid all anxiety. Using a combination of boxes and rectangles filled with both text and images. Emphasis was given to five illustrations of a variety of passengers making their way through the the clean and brightly lit stations and trains of the central London Railway line Twopenny Tube. Fitted tightly between the illustrations the text encroached onto the centre illustration. A map of the route from Shephero’s Bush to The Bank the Twopenny line takes is crammed into the poster below the text and the central image. The poster was designed in 1905 however the designer who designed the poster is unknown.

In the 1906 the Underground Group was formed when the Central London Railway was consolidated with other underground lines. The decision to form the Underground group was administrated by a central authority under Sir George Gibb. Each separate line within the underground group had their own signage and promotional posters. So in 1907 the Underground group introduced its own trademark to standardise the signage of the Underground Group (Figure 2). The trademark was a solid red Roundel and blue roundel, a simple geometric design. The Signage used the colour palette of bold red, white and blue appealed to the passenger using the underground group lines. However, despite the new signage for the Underground group being a success there was very little attention paid to the marketing of the London underground in a constant manner.

1908 Sir George Gibbs assistant Frank Pick became officially the undergrounds publicity manager after spending years being the unofficial publicity manager steering the development of the undergrounds corporate identity by commissioning eye-catching commercial art, graphic design and modern architecture. Pick in 1915 hired Edward McKnight Kauffer to design posters for the London Underground. The first posters produced by Edward for the London underground celebrated the comfort of the train system which integrated provocative cubist abstraction, Japanese aesthetics into his designs which Kauffer was one of Pick’s top designers, designing over 120 posters for the London underground. An example if the Winter Sales (Figure 3) designed in 1921 which shows silhouettes of pedestrians battling the British London weather. At the for Kauffer time Graphic Design and fine art were interchangeable because he saw the futility of trying to paint and do advertising at the same time.

Picks second major innovation in managing the visual identity of the London underground was to complement the promotional posters with a standardised system of signage. As a result, in 1915 Edward Johnston a typographer (is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed.) was commissioned by Frank Pick to devise a Typeface for the London Underground as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity. Johnston developed the new typeface for the London underground which is known as the ‘Johnston Sans’. Which the name of the London underground suggests that the Johnston Sans has no serifs. Serifs are a slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter in certain typefaces. Although it does maintain the basic, humanist proportions of the serif type. The plain block letters are monoline, which means that they demonstrate the no variation in the stroke width throughout the typeface. This also helps to make the typeface crisp and clear. Making the typeface crisp and clear was a clear objective of Edward Johnston because he attempted to create lettering that would be legible in the blink of an eye from a passing train. The use of the geometry is clear within the Johnston sans typeface. The “O” within the London Underground Typeface is a perfect circle for example, Johnston could have been easily rendered more legible with some added stress or adjustment to the shape. However, this was important to both Johnston and Pick that the lettering expressed the same sense of glamour and modernity that the abstract potters emphasised. In 1915 Edward Johnston presented the uppercase lettering for the typeface and was followed by the lowercase in 1916   Johnston’s calligraphic influence may be seen in many lower case letters such as the hooked ‘l’ and the diamond shape dots on the ‘i’ and ‘j’. Edward Johnston designed Sans two weights, for the London underground typeface, Ordinary and Heavy. These were only available in metal or wood types to be used by a letter press.

Edward Johnston greatly admired Roman capitals, writing that they "held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions.” The Roman capitals was what influenced the Johnson whilst creating the capitals within the typeface for the London Underground. However, for the lowercase Edwards Johnsons was influenced by the traditional serif letters.

Inspired by Edward Johnson and the Johnson typeface it was developed by Eric Gill in 1928. Gill sans was used for all posters, timetables and publicity material fir the London and North Eastern Railway. It also soon became used on the modernist, deliberately simple covers of Penguin books, and was sold up to very large sizes which were often used in British posters and notices of the period. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years following its release, and remains extremely popular, like the Johnston sans typeface.

In 1979 due to technological advances the old letterpress and metal type era was almost gone, and the new photo-composition technology and modern publicity design created an increasing flow of new type styles, sizes and weights. This resulted in the Transport for London using Gill Sans and News Gothic whilst the new typeface was being developed. Influenced by the typeface Johnston sans to become a graphic design Eiichi Kono joined Banks and Mills a graphic design company based in London after completing his MA at the Royal College of Art. On his first day he was given the job of updating the iconic typeface Johnston font by Colin Banks. He was asked to devise a New Johnston family with three weights (light, Medium and Bold). Kono started to design the New Johnston family by expanding the typeface and redrawing the characters, working hard not to damage or compromise the typeface’s humanist traits. A key feature that Kono added to the New Johnson type face was the addition of diamond-shape punctuation which picked up on Johnston’s original diamond-shaped tittles (dots over the lowercase ‘i’ and ‘j’ letters). The Johnston family ended up developing into a typeface family with eight different weights, Light, Medium and bold weights with corresponding italics (a way to emphasise key points in a printed text), Medium Condensed and Bold Condensed for the New Johnston typeface giving it more versatility. Which compared to the original family with only having regular and bold with no lowercase designed. For the new Johnston type face to be effective Kono examined details of other typefaces using a microscope: height ratio of upper and lowercase letters, and the weight ratio of vertical and horizontal strokes. Popular and successful san serif typefaces Helvetica and Gill Sans Kono compared against the original Johnson typeface. From the comparisons Kono found that the Johnson regular was lighter in weight, had a smaller x-height (the distance between the baseline of a line of type and tops of the main body of lower case letters. The x-height is a factor in typeface identification and readability) and had wider default letter space. When looking at the comparisons Kono figured out why the Johnson regular didn’t work well in small text sizes compared to the Helvetica and Gill Sans.  However, Edward Johnston adhered to a rule that the height-to-weight ratio of cap height to stem thickness should be 7 to 1. Which compared to text sizes of Helvetica Regular, Gill Sans Medium and Johnston Ordinary, they all had 7 to 1. To make the Johnston typeface more effective and work well in small text sizes, Kono needed to adjust the Johnston regular to have more weight and x-height and tighter spacing. However, for the typeface to be effective at smaller sizes some of the trajanic proportions will have to be adjusted. Kono increased the overall x-height by 6% throughout all the weights, for increased legibility. It took 18 months although Kono had the deadline of two months to devise the new typeface.

Again as a result of the advances in the technology available, in the early 1990s, it was digitised, then redigitised by Monotype in 2002, when italics were added. In 2008, further minor changes were made to bring it back to be more in line with Johnston's original designs.

In conclusion, after looking at the development in the Poster Designs, branding and typeface of the London underground. The Johnston typeface is regarded as on of the all time classics with a long lasting legacy because of how it is entrenched in the graphical make-up of London, and represents the city itself. The typeface used to create logo types of the the Mayer of London, the London Assembly and the Greater London Authority. The typeface has recently been used within the London 2012 Olympics for the signage for people to find their way to the various events.  The Typeface represents London so Distinctively and authoritatively. Over the years the designs of the Johnson typeface, has been developed due to technological advances but the fundamentals of the original design back in 1916 will always be part of the typeface for the London Underground. To continue to develop my contextual knowledge within the history of Graphic Design I will continue looking at the theme of typography for my presentation I will move from the typeface design of the London underground and design, I will now look into The Bauhaus which took place around the same time period as the branding for the London Underground changed and revolutionised the London underground brand that is know today worldwide. Typefaces associated with Bauhaus are Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface, Bauhaus typeface design is based on Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface and Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner.

Bibliography

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-modern-ar

http://www.aiga.org/what-is-design/

Graphic Design A new History. 2nd ed. 

Michael Evamy 2007. Logo.

Angus Hyland and Steve Bateman  2011.Symbol: The reference guide to abstract and figurative trademarks

Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne 2012. 100 Ideas that changed Graphic Design.

http://travelsofadam.com/2013/08/london-underground-desing

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/february/eiichi-kono-on-new-johnston/

http://www.londonreconnections.com/2009/a-typeface-for-the-underground/

http://www.ejf.org.uk/Resources/ekono.pdf