A Review by Barry Gray

The Moving Metropolis is subtitled “A History of London’s Transport since 1800”. Thus it will come as no surprise that this is a general history rather than a book dedicated to graphic design. Equally, in view of the importance of design and signing to the various undertakings which became London Transport, signs, posters, maps and typefaces feature often in this illustrated history. The influence of Frank Pick (who became Managing Director of the Underground Group) is mentioned and it was Pick who commissioned Edward Johnson to design the famous typeface for the Underground as well as promoting the high quality publicity and the new station designs of Charles Holden.

This is basically a book of illustrations with informative captions with sections introduced by short essays taking the reader over two centuries from 1800 to the new millennium. The book is published in association with London’s Transport Museum and concentrates, not unnaturally therefore, on London Transport and its predecessors. In reality, the subtitle would be better off without the apostrophe ‘s’ as the main line railways are dealt with cursorily. As a comparison, the Metropolitan Railway has 60 references in the index and the Southern Railway 3, despite the fact that almost all of South London was covered by the SR network.

Review by John Waites

The big idea behind Wayshowing is that the objective of signage should be to show the user of signs the way, rather than requiring the user to find the way. According to Per Mollerup, wayshowing and wayfinding relate to each other as do writing and reading, teaching and learning, or cooking and eating. Perhaps a closer analogy might be to point of sale and point of purchase. For years point of sale was the usual term, until marketing practitioners moved the emphasis to the purchase by the consumer.

The book is divided into two main sections, Principles and Practices. For a signage professional, some of the material feels a little too obvious. However, Per Mollerup roams widely across sign design and implementation, including familiar areas such as contrast, fonts, sign positioning and signs for the visually impaired.

The section on Practices includes cases from environments that depend on signage, including hospitals, airports, railways, museums and cities. For students or those setting out on a career in sign design, the book is comprehensive and will prove extremely useful.

Reviewed by Richard Dragun

Robert Brownjohn's cult status amongst designers derived from his ability to capture the experimental spirit of the 1960s with brilliant graphic ideas, whilst ' living fast' and inevitably 'dying young'. His life really did lend credibility to the maxim ‘if you can remember the '60s, you weren't really there!’ For those of us who weren't really there, the first ever monograph on this iconic figure of graphic design provides a valuable reference for designers and film fans alike, whilst giving us a glimpse of the changing world of advertising and film in the liberated atmosphere of the 1960s.

The content is presented in two halves; his life and his work. The first half traces his life and career via a chronology of reminiscences, anecdotes and events. The format is simple and direct, a timeline reading like a series of diary entries highlighting what he did, where and with whom. The list of contributors reads like a roll-call of the great and the good from the world of advertising, design and entertainment, some of whom still seem not to have recovered from the experience of knowing him.

by Simon James

In this photographically illustrated book, James turns a curious and unsentimental eye on the relationship between the London Underground system (including its signs) and the people who use it. Its a book about gaps...between designer and user, staff and passenger.