Fashioning the Tube: posters and the new consumers

Speaking of old travel posters, the London Transport Museum are holding another of their fascinating talks for The art of the poster – a century of design. A few weeks ago a group of us went to one on the prolific graphic designer Abram Games.

On Tuesday 25th November, fashion historian, Emmanuelle Dirix, will discuss how London Underground posters were designed to appeal to women in the 1920s and 1930s.


"It became apparent that ‘posters accompanied the housewife all the way from her front door to the shop window’, resulting in a new style of poster emerging to cater for this new consumer audience."

It begins at 18.30 and tickets are £8.00 adults; £6.00 concessions; £4.00 student. They can be pre booked on 020 7565 7298 and full details are on their website.

The poster above made me think about how London Transport deal with shopping now. I can't say I've seen one recent poster about getting to the shops by Tube. There are a lot of posters on the London Underground for the new massive Westfield Shopping Centre.


But they're clearly designed by Westfield themselves and although there's some advice on the best stations to use to visit (Wood Lane, Shepherd's Bush Market & White City), it's almost tacked on as an afterthought. I wonder if Westfield will eventually work together with TfL to get something more like the older posters.

On the subject of shopping, you might have seen some Tweets where I was treated to a day out at Bicester Village. I've not been to Westfield yet (despite living quite close) but will be interesting to compare the two experiences. Bicester Village is about an hour away from London and has about 120 shops in it. They have designer outlets selling last season (or older) stuff very reduced prices. As I'm not a complete fashion victim (yet) it was fine for me & I grabbed some bargains.

I also had some "Handbag Therapy", where a lovely lady called Debbie Piercy looked at the contents of my bag and managed to be surprisingly insightful on what it said about my character. If you fancy uploading a photo of "What's in your Handbag", you can get "analysed" & also have the chance of winning £1,000 shopping spree too.

Queuing whilst drunk moaning about the rain - Makes us Brits

I'm not looking forward to the prospect of getting on the London Underground today because of the smell of wet coats and being dripped on & prodded by umbrellas. I got drunk at the weekend, but enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to EastEnders. I spend much of my life in queues. I bought a shed-load of bargains last week (thanks to Bicester Village & Helen). Sadly all this just proves that I'm British.


It's official. The results of a poll (yep another one) of 5,000 people show 50 traits that make the British unique. There's nothing much in the top 10 to feel particularly proud about:

1. Talking about the weather

2. Great at queueing

3. Sarcasm

4. Watching soaps

5. Getting drunk

6. A love of bargains

7. A love of curtain twitching

8. Stiff upper lip

9. Love of all television

10. Moaning

Sadly I have virtually all of those characteristics (although I've never been a curtain twitcher - except you could call a love of reading blogs and a penchant of some reality TV - curtain twitching to an extent. Plus, I don't love all television). The full list can be viewed here, if you want to see how many you share.

Not surprisingly travel is mentioned a few times - "Obsession with the traffic" is 13th, "Road Rage" is 25th and "Asking people about their journey" is 33rd. Being "Great at Queuing" is second & something that's part and parcel with Tube travel. As is - Irony, Sarcasm and Moaning.

It's lucky for Transport for London that we also have "Stiff upper lip", "Inability to Complain", "An inability to express our emotions" and "The ability to laugh at ourselves", otherwise millions of us wouldn't use the London Underground, or there'd be daily riots on it.

I have a number of friends who are Parisian and they say that Metro commuters simply wouldn't put up with what we cope with on the Tube. There would be much more commuter rage, queue jumping and arguments. So just as well the more positive - "Being overly polite" and "Achieving against all odds" are also in the list.

If you're a Brit (or even if you're not a Brit) do you think it's a fair list? Anything else inherently British that's been left out?

Latest "most annoying commuter" poll

Since I started writing about the London Underground, I've seen loads of polls about who are the most annoying commuters. The type that top the polls (or are at least in the top three) time after time are people playing loud music on their personal walkmans, mp3's & now iPods.


So it's no surprise the latest poll by Jetsleeper has loud music players at number one, but I was slightly surprised at number three - "the early morning or late night traveller found asleep and leaving a trail of dribble on their neighbour's shoulder."

I'm sure this is poetic licence on the part of Jetsleeper or thelondonpaper who reported it last night. Falling asleep I don't doubt, but seriously how many people do you see dribbling in their sleep on the Tube?


I've taken a fair few pictures of people asleep on the Tube in my time. So have others like Chutney Bannister & Mike - with the rather cheeky one below - which is reality isn't as bad as it looks! But in both pictures the guys sleeping have managed to hold themselves upright and not dribble on someone's shoulder.


There's even a Facebook Group of pictures of People who fall asleep on Public Transport. I've not looked through all 100 odd pictures, but certainly after the first 50 there were none of people dribbling on other people's shoulders.

Maybe we just don't travel on the right lines and perhaps there's a special section of London which has a bunch of narcoleptics with saliva problems in it. Who knows?

So who would top your poll for the most annoying commuters? Answers welcome in the comments.

Fighting Fat Reminders on the Tube

I really need to go on a diet, but with winter approaching, I love warm comforting food and it's hard to resist roasts, Toad in the Hole & other insulating food. So I hate standing in front of this poster on the London Underground about Jelly Bellies:


Virgin Media's ads for Jelly Belly, Bingo Wings and Muffin Tops, I'm sure are personally directed at me, and if anyone knows Richard Branson can they make him stop these ads. Now. Please.

Especially when there are some great Tube ads seductively telling me to eat chips. In fact willing me to get the train to go faster so I can get home and cook them.


What's a person supposed to do in situations like this?

Holland Park Tube's Obama Celebrations

Great to see that some staff on the London Underground appreciated Barack Obama's victory:


This was taken by Andrew Grill today at Holland Park Station.

Great spot.

Update - Earlier in the day, a number of friends told me about the following Flickr Group - A Message for Obama which is on Flickr's blog.


The idea's to put your own personal message to Barack Obama on it. I think Metro's front cover summed it up for me and many others.