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
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