It is hard to imagine a simpler symbol than the one that brands every London bus, subway, and station, the London Underground Roundel. Although little more than a dark blue bar placed across two red-rimmed semi-circles, the Roundel has evolved from humble signage meant to tell passengers where to get off the train to an emblem that represents not just a metropolis but its people as well. The Roundel’s incredible journey is being freshly explored in Logo for London, a beautiful, lavishly illustrated new book. Logo for London tracks the Roundel’s cultural, artistic, and social importance over the last hundred years as it became the world’s most well-known transportation symbol.
While simple, the genius of the Roundel’s design is that it is a perfectly abstract symbol for the concept of a subway itself. It implies what it stands for. The Roundel’s semicircles form opposing platforms seen on either side of the intersecting line, an underground railroad that both divides and unites the symbol as a whole into a destination. The Roundel is neither picture nor typography. The Roundel is always instantly recognizable as itself in whatever context it is placed while simultaneously communicating the idea of transportation, urban cool, and serving as a visual metonym for London itself.
The Roundel’s incredible journey is being explored in a new book by design historian, David Lawrence called Logo for London. Logo for London tracks the Roundel’s cultural, artistic, and social importance over the last hundred years as it became the world’s most well-known transportation symbol.
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