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Archived posts: Posters

Aldwych Underground Station

Last week we got the chance to take a trip down into one of the many hidden parts of London, courtesy of the London Transport Museum’s Station Open Day at the now-closed Aldwych underground station. The station, on a little branch line off the Piccadilly line, has been closed since the early 90s. It originally opened in 1907 (though it was then named Strand station, being renamed Aldwych in 1915), and right from the start is was rather underused. So underused in fact, that the eastern platform wasn’t used at all for train services from 1914 onwards.

Though it, and the other platform, did operate as air raid shelters for the citizens of London during both wars, and also, during the First World War, for 300 paintings from the National Gallery. In the Second World War, the British Museum even used the station to store the Elgin Marbles. After the war the Eastern platform was used by London Transport to create full scale mock-ups of proposed station designs, and more recently the entire station has been used for film and TV productions, as well for Emergency Response Unit training sessions.

Because of all the film and TV work, it’s rather tricky to work out which bits of existing signage and advertising are real, and which are bits left over from various film art departments.

This roundel, which was leaning against one of the walls, looked fairly authentic though. It features Edward Johnston’s iconic Johnston Sans typeface, (and the roundel itself is Johnston’s design – read more about the roundel’s history), interestingly with the alternate version of the W. Possibly from around the mid 1930s?

There were also some genuine posters from the early 70s on one of the walls – check out the mind-expanding Planetarium poster:

Lovely stuff.

9 December 2011 | 4 Comments

Wim Crouwel at Woodbridge & Rees

We nipped downstairs last week to catch the opening of the second instalment of the Wim Crouwel poster show at Woodbridge and Rees.

This second part of the show features twenty-three original posters, all of them for sale, from Crouwel’s time at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam – they’re all from a collection owned by the fantastic Nijhof&Lee bookshop in Amsterdam.

The show is open from 12pm to 6pm daily (from 1pm on Saturdays, closed Sundays), and runs until 27 April. Well worth a look.

18 April 2011 | No Comments

Reverting to Type

We nipped across to the private view of the fantastic new letterpress show Reverting to Type at the Standpoint Gallery in Hoxton last week. The private view was rammed, so we popped back the following day for a proper look, and to take some pictures.

The show has been curated our friends by Graham Bignell of New North Press (with whom we made the posters for the Twickenham Carnival), and Richard Ardagh of Elephant’s Graveyard (we worked with him on the London Design Guide). It features contemporary letterpress work from studios right across the world, as well as a selection of UK letterpress folk including Justin Knopp of Typoretum (that’s his Rustic Fete poster above), Hand & Eye Letterpress, The Hi-Artz Press, Flowers & Fleurons, and Mr Smith’s Letterpress Workshop (that’s his Damaged Letterpress print below; check out Creative Review’s film of their visit to his studio).

The show is really extensive, the walls packed with fine examples of work, ranging from seasoned professionals to students from local art colleges; and there are also a series of prints that have been created specifically for the show. Nearly all the work is for sale, either as one-off originals, or limited edition prints; both framed and unframed.

There’s also a range of cards and artists-books on sale, including the stunning The Travelling Bar Maid by Lisa Rahman, printed by Graham Bignell.

Take a look at all our shots from the show on Alistair’s Flickr set. The show is open daily from 10-6, running from now until 24 December, then re-opening from 4 to 22 January 2011.

13 December 2010 | No Comments

Nobrow

We trundled over to Great Eastern Street yesterday to have a chat to the folks at Nobrow about a rather exciting project we’re working on (more on that mighty soon), and to check out their lovely shop, which opened in the summer.

Nobrow has fingers in various tasty pies: there’s Nobrow Press, the small independent publishing company which specialises in low edition illustrated books; Nobrow Small Press which creates extremely limited edition screenprinted books; a magazine (called Nobrow, naturally enough); and now the shop, which stocks all their publications, as well as a range of delicious silk-screened prints.

We particularly like Jack Teagle’s Jeff: Job Hunter, the story of a man who’s forced to retrieve the skull of the half-man half-beast from the dungeon of terror, just so that he can claim his job-seeker’s allowance.

Lovely stuff.

21 October 2010 | No Comments

100 Years of Iconic Posters

This looks like it could be an interesting talk: London Transport Museum’s Senior Curator Claire Dobbin is giving a talk, 100 Years of Iconic Posters, at Covent Garden’s new Apple Store, on Wednesday 27 October. “The illustrated talk will show highlights from a century of outstanding design, which transformed the Tube into London’s longest art gallery. Featured artists include Man Ray, Graham Sutherland, Howard Hodgkin and Sir Peter Blake.”

The poster above is The Lure of the Underground by Alfred Leete, from 1927.

(Thanks to Alex for the heads up.)

19 October 2010 | 1 Comment

The Art of War

We were doing a bit of research this morning, and stumbled across a really fantastic archive of wartime poster art and illustration, courtesy of the National Archives’ Art of War online exhibition. There’s a wealth of beautiful stuff on display, featuring a lot of original artwork, including Patrick Keely’s 1940s Road Safety poster (above), a Carless Talk Costs Lives poster by Reeves (below left), and Reginald Mount’s Hawker Hurricane poster (below right).

That then reminded us to post about (and order our own copy of) Paul Rennie’s rather lovely book Modern British Posters, published recently by Black Dog Press, which features a vast range of 20th Century British posters, including the three below.

Mmmm. Posters.

25 August 2010 | No Comments