Author: Test User

Railways under London

Railways-under-London-dust-jacket-cov

The London Underground celebrates 150 years today. One of the best representations of the London Underground was a book for children, Railways under London by Marie Neurath, published by Max Parrish in 1948.

This book explained to young readers how the Underground worked, including how escalators and lifts work, how platforms are built for speed and how machines print tickets and give change. Some of the illustrations in the book are straightforward and easy to understand; others are much more complex and require detailed study.

Much of the preparatory material for the book is in the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection held here in the Typography Department at Reading. Notes and sketches shows the care that was taken in making sure that the explanations were technically correct: the designers and artists often worked from engineering drawings supplied by London Transport, and final drawings were sent to experts for checking before they were produced in the book.

 

underground

This cross-section diagram conveys depth by showing tunnels at different levels, and shows how people got to and away from the trains by stairs and escalators. The people pictograms take different forms: some represent people standing still; a shortened leg on the standing still pictogram represents people walking up and down stairs, and a side view configuration indicates people walking.

 

escalator

This diagram explains how escalators work. A full explanation requires the reader to engage with the text, which is written in a very child-friendly way. The pictures of the posters on the wall, albeit comprising Isotype images, and the people on the stair, in particular one holding the handrail and one walking off the escalator, adds contextual information relevant to the London Underground.

 

See  www.isotyperevisited.org

 

Reading graduate is ‘Penguin’s brightest star’

Penguin’s brightest star is not an author but illustrator (and Reading Typography graduate) Coralie Bickford-Smith, according to AbeBooks. The AbeBooks site features an interview and shows her brilliant covers for Penguin Classics, the Great Food series and her interpretation of a three-volume edition of the Arabian Nights. There is even more at Coralie’s own website, http://www.cb-smith.com

 

Non-Latin scripts: from metal to digital type

Available from the St Bride shop, Non-Latin scripts: from metal to digital type reproduces previously unpublished items for the Department’s Non-Latin Type Collection. Collection curator Fiona Rosscontributes a major essay on the type design process for non-Latin scripts and describes the exhibits, Graham Shaw discusses the relationship between these scripts and print technology, and John D. Berry’s afterword discusses the need for global resources in typography. An introduction by Paul Luna draws attention to the research possibilities of the Reading collection.


The publication records the ground-breaking exhibition this autumn at ATypI Hong Kong, hosted at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library, which displayed over 150 items from the collection, many of which are illustrated in the book. Exhibition co-curators Ross and Vaibhav Singh selected documents and artefacts to tell the story of type production across technologies in Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, and Thai. A supporting display of newspapers in these scripts showed many of the fonts in use.

The 3-week long exhibition was launched by a keynote presentation by Paul Luna, who discussed the research possibilities of the Reading collection and laid stress on the need for the more immaterial evidence of contemporary font production to be preserved in the same way as physical evidence from the past, the survival of which helps us understand the processes involved and provides an evidence base for current font design. With an audience drawn from China and the East Asia region, India, Europe and the Americas, this was global exposure for one of Reading’s key research collections, with appreciation being expressed both at the conference and subsequently on social media.

For more images from the book and the exhibition, follow this link.

Supporting design studies in the EBacc

Include design

We are the first institution, with Goldsmiths, to support the campaign to include design in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), a proposed new qualification. Currently, the EBacc will require pupils to achieve a certificate in five subject areas: maths, English, sciences, languages (ancient and modern) and humanities (defined as only history or geography). This formulation has been widely criticised for its exclusion of creative subjects, and sparked a widely supported campaign to include design in the core subjects of the qualification. The list of organisations and companies backing the campaign reads like a roster of design excellence, across the sector.

The case for design’s contribution to the economy was recently made by the Design Commission’s Restarting Britain: Design Education and Growth report, supported by the Design Council and other organisations. Its text makes a strong case for the contribution of the creative sector to the UK economy in terms of GDP, employment, and innovation. In particular, it highlights design’s role in inter-disciplinary skills that are essential for innovation and enterprise. Design is an enabling sector, without which many seemingly unrelated industries cannot function effectively: for example, advances in science rely on design for their commercial application, and successful differentiation. For Typography’s point of view, this is especially pertinent in a global market where using textual and visual information in meaningful ways is increasingly the product itself, separate from any rendering environments.

You can add your support to the campaign here.

 

Design Issues: visual essays

Sue Walker joins Design Issues as Associate Editor, Archives to develop visual essays that derive from high quality collections and archives of design-related materials worldwide.

Design Issues, the first American academic journal to examine design history, theory, and criticism, provokes enquiry into the cultural and intellectual issues surrounding design. It is one of the world’s foremost research journals and a flagship product of MIT Press.

 Call for contributions

We are looking for visual essays that explain an important and interesting ‘design issue’, from any period, through images from a collection or archive. This might be

  • a set of related images that explains something, or tells a story, of cultural or social importance
  • a set of seemingly unrelated images that, when accompanied by verbal explanation, become linked together to tell something new
  • a series of single images that each represent a significant cultural or social issue

Each essay will be six black-and-white pages designed by MA Book Design students at the University of Reading, under the supervision of the Programme Director, Ruth Blacksell. The published material will have to be accompanied by copyright clearance on all the visual material.

Send proposals, or ideas for discussion, to:

Prof Sue Walker
Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
University of Reading
Whiteknights
Reading RG6 2AU

Email: s.f.walker@reading.ac.uk

Chancellor presents student design prizes

Over the summer BA Graphic Communication students who has just finished their first year entered a competition run organised by Oculus, a Reading design company who are celebrating their 20th anniversary. The students were asked to create a brand for a fictional company and to deliver both visuals and a written rationale of the thinking behind their idea.

Earlier this month the top ten entries were displayed at an awards ceremony hosted by Oculus and prizes were presented by the Chancellor, Sir John Madejski, to the three winners Mike Leonard (1st place), Bethan Prestwich (3rd place), and Emily Whiteside (2nd place).