The Tube is a BBC Two television documentary which looks into the life of those who work and travel on London Underground. It premiered in February, but is just coming to India and is well worth watching to see behind-the-scenes footage of both the infrastructure but also the people who make the Tube go.
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Yes, I love British Design, but that isn’t much of a secret: I’ve written about the Halley Research Station, British Design Classics stamps by Royal Mail, British Rail Corporate Identity, 1965-1994 and innumerable posts about the London Underground Map. So I bring great tidings: at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is an exhibition which has been ongoing for the last few months entitled British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age:
In 1948 London hosted the first Olympic Games after the Second World War. The ‘Austerity Games’ (as they became known) took place at a time of economic crisis in a city devastated by bombing, but they provided a platform for reconciliation and reconstruction. In 2012 Britain welcomes the Olympics once more, and while the spirit remains, the context in which they are taking place has entirely changed. British Design 1948–2012 traces those changes by exploring buildings, objects, images and ideas produced by designers and artists born, trained or based in Britain.
The displays examine the shifting nature of British design over 60 years: three galleries respectively explore the tension between tradition and modernity; the subversive impulse in British culture; and Britain’s leadership in design innovation and creativity. The exhibition reveals how British designers have responded to economic, political and cultural forces that have fundamentally shaped how we live today. They have created some of the most inventive and striking objects, technologies and buildings of the modern world.
The V&A is an amazing museum, and if you are anywhere near London, you must see this exhibit before 12 August 2012.
The above video features the following designers:
Jay Osgerby & Edward Barber (Barber Osgerby) – London 2012 torch designers
Margaret Calvert – Motorway Sign designer
Andrew Stevens & Paul Neale (Graphic Thought Facility) – exhibition show designers
Kenneth Grange – Kodak camera designer (Brownie Vectra Camera)
Thomas Heatherwick – London Transport bus redesign
How did I miss this? In 2009 the UK Royal Mail issued a set of eight British Design Classics stamps featuring excellent photography by Jason Tozer. I wouldn’t mind having these set of stampe, or really all ten of these items in my possession.
Pedestrians on Broadway in this area can stumble upon an Ivy League university or gaze through the windows of Tom’s Restaurant, of “Seinfeld” fame. They can find a copy of “Pride and Prejudice” for $2 at a stand on West 112th Street, and, four blocks south, a taco for 50 cents more. They can even sip mojitos at Havana Central at the West End, near West 114th Street.
But they will never find West End Avenue between Broadway and Riverside Drive.
Mr. Tauranac, who has for years assailed Mr. Vignelli for such inaccuracies as having Bowling Green north of Rector Street, said the revelations had forced him to re-evaluate his harsh judgments of Mr. Vignelli, 81. “It really has dulled my attack, that’s for sure,” Mr. Tauranac said.
Moments later, he retrieved from his office the May 2008 copy of Men’s Vogue, featuring an updated Vignelli map “every bit as terrible a map as he designed in 1972,” to Mr. Tauranac’s eye.
“I’m happy to see that he’s mellowing,” Mr. Vignelli said.
via On New York Subway Map, a Wayward Broadway and Phantom Blocks – NYTimes.com.
The current map is an abomination of design, the revelation of more mistakes just compounds the existing travesty. Not that Vignell’s 1972 map is any better with oversimplification, a precious use of color and lines rendering it more art piece than functional map or diagram.
It seems every designer is trying to reinvent Harry Beck’s amazing diagram for both the Paris Metro and the London Underground:
The problem being that Beck’s Underground Map is uniquely suited to London’s system, not New York City subway’s combination of express/local lines, geography and history of being composed of three different subway companies.
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Detail from Harry Beck’s 1951 Paris Metro map design (which was rejected by the city’s transport authorities). Source: London Transport Museum
Harry Beck: The Paris Connection:
The Royal Mail recently commemorated one of the UK’s greatest works of visual information design when Harry Beck’s London Underground diagram was included for the first time on a British postage stamp writes Mark Ovenden. The importance of Beck’s rectilinear, topologic 1933 diagram is widely recognised and praised by graphic designers. Many wonder why Beck never extended his ideas outside London. The answer is, he did – to the nearest major subway network to London: Paris.
Paint & Typography, originally uploaded by plemeljr
The woman whose voice can be heard across the Underground has been axed after recording a series of spoof messages revealing what she really thought of Tube travellers.
Emma Clarke, the voice of the Underground who has been advising people to ‘Mind the Gap’ since 1999, recorded a series of spoof messages in her trademark soft and clear style.
The professional voiceover artist lets rip at the type of people she thinks sum up the misery of Tube travel.
But now the parent company of the Tube, TfL, has made an announcement of its own, calling Ms Clarke ‘silly’ and cutting future contracts with her.
Read more and listen to the spoof announcements.
Amazing how the character of a space and place can be defined by a voice.
For most of us just getting around the major subway systems of the world is difficult enough. What would a transit system look like if you were disabled or in a wheelchair? I became very curious in this and started to collect maps of different transit systems around the world.
Accessible Transit – London Underground Detail
And then it occurred to me: if maps virtually represent life, through convenient fictions, then why are there no maps for those who are disabled or require additional accessibility? Wouldn’t the mother with newborn in stroller need a different map then those without the need to lug all the accoutrement’s of childhood? Equally, those in a wheelchair require a map different then one which the walking can use. I decided to rectify the situation by editing the maps of major metropolitan transportation systems, in order to create a map for those who are not represented on the official map.
My first Accessible Transit Map was the London Underground map, which can be downloaded in the following versions:
As you can see from the detail below, those of you needing better accessibility have limited options; the DLR and the Jubilee Line are your best choices.
I realize that Transport for London has been making great strides in retrofitting many stations in order to comply with DDA requirements. TfL is doing what they can with hundreds of years old infrastructure and have an extensive transport accessibility system including Dial-a-Ride, which will pick up a disabled person and transport them. They are installing tactile warning surfaces on stairs and at the platform edge, and I’ve noticed the staff is generally helpful to those with disabilities.
But all of this doesn’t change the fact that maps have an intrinsic reality; a reality which those of us with proper ambulatory functions take for granted. Of course Transport for London won’t issue this map as an official Underground map because the map looks really, really bad (not to mention this would be really confusing for the Yank tourists). Not even half of the system’s tube stations – I count 82 out of 275 stations – are accessible.
Lest my reader believes I am picking on the fair city of London, be still. The New York City Subway maps is coming soon; it took longer because the graphics file is horrendously large and difficult to work with.
Using Khoi Vinh’s prior art, A Subway System in Your Pocket, for creating a iPhone subway system map I’ve gone and created a London Underground system map for iPhone. While Transport for London has a nice GIF System Map, there is something very nice about Khoi’s image hack which takes advantage of the iPhones photo limitations. Since I travel to London a bit, this seemed like a perfect companion to my travels.
In the spirit of sharing, please Download the iPhone Underground Map. It is a zip file comprised of 6 individual jpg’s for you to zoom in on each quadrant.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=plemeljr-20&o=1&p=12&l=ur1&category=blackfriday&banner=1P1GW80DE247G1YW95R2&f=ifr
Just like Khoi’s map, download the zip file, and import the archive contents into iPhoto.Create a new album called something you can remember, such as “Underground” and drag the files into the folder, set your iPhone to synch with that album via iTunes.
And there you go.
