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It is hard to imagine a simpler symbol than the one that brands every London bus, subway, and station - the London Underground Roundel.
It started as humble signage meant to tell passengers where to get off the train over a hundred years ago and has evolved to an emblem that represents not just a metropolis but its people as well. This simple dark blue bar placed across two red-rimmed semi-circles has such a great cultural, artistic, and social importance, that it became one of the most recognised brands worldwide.
Let's dive into the history of The Roundel - the logo of London.
It is hard to find a spot in London where you can't see it - the roundel is everywhere.
The London Roundel traces its origins back to 1906, when the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, shortened to the Underground Group, decided they needed a way to tell passengers riding on the subways where they were within the city's vast underground labyrinth of stations. Underground transportation was a relatively new phenomenon in the world, and it came with its navigation challenges. As a passenger, it is easy to lose the sense of orientation when you are riding a train under the ground, so the Underground Group needed signage that was easy to read and had a distinctive enough design that it would stand out even amongst the busy visual background noise of subway billboards and advertisements.
The management came up with the idea to place white boards with five-foot-long blue nameplates on every London Underground platform, with the name of each station spelled out in six-inch-tall letters. The plates were placed on each platform, frequent enough to make sure that they are clearly visible from each carriage. The Roundel itself was created because there was a perceived need to set this signage apart by providing contrast to the lettering. After a number of tests, a round red disc was placed beneath the signs' blue bars. By 1912 or 1913, the circle evolved, with two white semi-circles placed inside the red disc. The Roundel was born and remains virtually unchanged today.
Around the same time, Underground Group's publicity manager Frank Pick commissions typographer Edward Johnston to design a company typeface. That was the birth of Johnston, the well-known typeface that is used by Transport for London until today.
The simplicity of the Roundel wasn't just a graphic design solution; the Underground Group needed a utilitarian sign that could be easily manufactured and replicated in hundreds of copies for the rapidly growing metro system.
And although the Roundel quickly became the logo of London Tube for every Londoner, it started becoming an actual brand only after 1947, when Harold Hutchison was hired as London Transport's publicity officer.
London Underground was mainly run by railwaymen and engineers, but Hutchison was a man from the commercial world of advertising, and he brought that background to his new job. He had his vision of how to create a commercial brand out of London Transport. But what is more important, he had a budget for it - London Transport was growing rapidly, not just physically, but financially as well, so Hutchison had some money to spend.
These factors enabled him to commission considerable amounts of graphic design and artworks to promote London Transport and the Underground at a time when the system was expanding considerably and taking the metropolis with it - new tubes, new suburbs, new towns on the periphery. All needed publicity and signs to identify facilities, and the roundel was the center of it. And although some critics think that the Roundel was heavily overused because of Hutchison's new strategy, one thing is certain - the sign was embedded in the consciousness of anyone thinking about London as the city and capital - the effects of this we see around the world today in references to London and British popular culture.
In 1972, the roundel is officially named as the corporate symbol of London Transport. As a result, the Design Research Unit is employed to review the design and use of logo and typeface.
Today, variations of the Roundel are used for all the services that are covered by Transport for London - the Underground, buses, taxis and many more.
So, what makes the London Underground Roundel so unique? When it was introduced, it quickly became more than just a logo - it was a bold symbol of a new era, an era of free movement, an era of big, international cities. It was a symbol of a human-facing city, a logo for a new urban lifestyle. It was the symbol of the movement itself.
#Underground #London #Roundel
