London Underground posters

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top left: Power by Edward McKnight Kauffer; top right: Speed Underground by Alan Rogers
bottom left: Which? by Maurice Beck; bottom right: St Paul’s Cathedral by Robert Sargent Austin

A small sample of the many great posters commissioned by London Transport during the last century, part of the collection at the London Transport Museum. These are all from the 1930s. The design and iconography of London’s Underground system has occupied much of my attention this year due to a substantial book project; more about that later. Meanwhile, Jonathan Glancey was asking earlier this week whether the expansion of the Underground system means the end of Harry Beck’s classic and much-imitated map design.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Battersea Power Station
• The Mentor
• The art of Cassandre, 1901–1968

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown DVD

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It’s that thing again…

There’s much to loathe about this time of year—the short and dismal days whose appalling weather will persist until mid-March, the trees denuded at last of their leaves, the Chinese Water Torture of Xmas trivia—but the post this week at least brought some compensations. As well as the copies of Dodgem Logic there was a box of Penguin book cover postcards which I won in a Guardian Books giveaway, and also the long-awaited arrival of Frank Woodward’s documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown on DVD. I’ve mentioned this latter work before, of course, but I’ll repeat that it’s the best documentary to date concerning the life and career of HPL, and features several pieces of my own artwork as well as contributions from other fine Lovecraftian illustrators. Among the interviewees are Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Caitlin R Kiernan, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell and Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi. The DVD is only Region 1/NTSC at the moment, but is available also as a Blu-ray disc if you need to see the aforementioned in high-definition. The film runs for 90-minutes and the disc includes an additional 70-minutes of interviews, a Lovecraft art gallery and more. Essential viewing for all aficionados.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive

Prague panoramas

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Now that we’re into the dismal weather, sombre views of Old Prague’s splendour seem appropriate. The pages at 360 Cities have a lot of Prague panoramas—76 in all—including many more of the Viriconium-esque Giant Mantis performance I linked to a few years ago. A shame they don’t do this every year.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
• Eno’s Luminous Opera House panorama
• Callanish Standing Stone panoramas
• Jaipur Observatory panoramas
• Infinite reflections
• Large Hadron Collider panoramas
• Passage des Panoramas
• Bruges panoramas
• Paris panoramas
• Venice panoramas
• St Pancras in Spheroview
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Giant mantis invades Prague
• Whirling Istanbul