Tube map design.

Earlier in the week my Father gave me these old school tube maps, he works for the print company Colour Five and recently got a job in from The London Transport musuem, who wanted to re-print some of these old bad boys. They're fascinating. The way the London Underground has evolved in terms of its network and design is pretty impressive with each map becoming more and more concise. I like to think that this reflects attitudes towards design, communicating ideas and messages efficiently as well as being coupled along with modernism at the time. Intriguing that the first two are very accurate in terms of London geography and they look like they've been hand drawn. Obviously the most modern tube map isn't to scale or accurate but designed merely to be clear and easy to understand, essential information design.

The covers are quite interesting too, some having maps of areas, lists of theatres and places of interests. In contrast to more recent times it's very different as I remember my favourite illustrator David Shrigley designing the cover a couple of years ago.

Some other interesting points are that the tube lines weren't always the same colour as we know them today, Central line used to be blue then changed to orange before the red it is today and Bakerloo line was a fabulous pink. The main thing I quite liked was the now abandoned and closed down stations that are shown, including: Uxbridge Road Station (which was between Shepherds Bush and Holland Park), Post Office Station, Addison Road Station and Praed Street Station to name a few.

If you like information design like me, this is the jazz right here:

Clickity click for a closer look.

 Issued 1908

Issued 1926

Issued 1933

 Issued 1938

Issued 1949

Bottle Design.

While I was at London College of Communication - UAL, you may be shocked to hear that I majored in illustration, my minor however was in information design. It's something that I've always found fascinating and ranges across a wide spectrum including books, album covers and signage to name a few examples.

I dabbled across these areas, but an obsession soon began to creep in. It started when we had a trip to Paris to have a mooch about and pop into a few design agencies. It's absolutley killing me but I can't remember nor find the name of this one agency we went to (LCC'ers feel free to help!) but they designed the label for the Belgian beer Vedett. They had this one idea how people would submit photographs of themselves and they would print it on the label like this. Genius idea, they still do it for special custom orders via their website which is worth a visit as it's very sleek and sexy.

I love this, I loved the idea of making something like a bottled good look very cool, so I started an experiment. I purchased bottled goods based purely on their design, yellow tail was one I vividly remember as I type this. The result and general rule of thumb was that if it was nicely designed in a cool or unique manner then the product itself usually reflected this too. If you buy something that looks cheap (price wise too) you do taste the different. This also reflects the people behind the brand, good design, good taste.

Give it a go, buy a bottled product just because it looks cool. You may end up spending a fraction more (not an awful lot though) but it'll be worth it. You're bound to come across a few pretentious looking ones that fail miserably to what I've just said, but the majority of the time it does work. 

I realize that this sounds incredibly obvious but label design for any bottle is integral to the brand, I've always liked to think that the label is what the product tastes like for the outside of the bottle.

I'm going to document a few findings and submit them here in bunches, I'm not going to deconstruct and analyze the design. They're here because they're bloody cool. Submissions are welcome too, would love to see what others find.