London Transport At London’s Service poster – Misha Black & Kraber – 1947

London Transport At London’s Service poster – Misha Black & Kraber – 1947 Between 1947 and 1966, Harold Hutchinson was Head of Publicity for London Transport. He is best known for creating his own version of the London Underground in an attempt to replace the familiar Harry Beck version. Beck’s iconic map made sense of a complicated underground network comprising of 150 miles of track and 273 stations. His map ignored scale and geography and was inspired by circuit diagrams used by electrical engineers. Hutchinson believed that he could design a superior version of the Beck diagram himself. The finished version was released in January 1960 but was not well-received. Whereas Beck’s map had, albeit with regular changes, been used for thirty years. Hutchinson’s map was replaced after just three! Whilst his new Underground Map wasn’t a success, Hutchinson was responsible for reviving Frank Pick’s attitude towards the benefits of using tube station posters to raise public awareness and promote the Underground’s services, stations and destinations. It was Hutchinson who introduced what is now known as the ‘Pair Poster’. The idea of the pair poster was to allow greater artistic and creative freedom on one poster and display it with a complimentary poster alongside it, allowing the company’s copywriters to provide the information and expand on the topic. This London Transport At London’s Service poster was one-half of the first of the pair of posters. It was illustrated by Misha Black and John Barker in 1947. It offers an aerial view of the city of London. A shape in the sky, looking like the planet Saturn or some kind of out-of-this-world spaceship is a globe representing the London Underground’s Roundel logo. Basic versions of the logo first appeared as station nameboards on Underground station platforms in 1908. These were usually a red bar and circle. The bar would have an infill of blue with the station name reversed out in white. In 1915, London Underground’s Frank Pick commissioned the graphic designer and calligrapher Edward Johnston to redesign the image. By 1917,  Johnston’s revised logo, was very similar to the one we know today. It is a version of this roundel that features on the London Transport at London’s service poster. The roundel is being beamed down like a spotlight across the whole of London. St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge stand prominently out of the surrounding landscape. Given that the poster was published a couple of years after the of world war, this image must have invoked the memory of the searchlights used extensively in London, in defence against nighttime bomber raids. This is one of our favourite London Transport posters! It is highly sought after and original copies come up very rarely. An original copy of this London Transport At London’s Service poster sold for over £5,000 back in 2012.