The Tube Roundel: An Evolution
I need to get something off my chest...
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine, an idiosyncratic newsletter about London history.
People find my chest irresistible. At least, they do when I wear this t-shirt.
Complete strangers will stop me in the street.
“Nice t-shirt,” they’ll say.
“Yes,” I’ll agree.
The conversation doesn’t go much further. This is London, after all. But I like to think we all share an admiration for the simple device that is the Tube roundel.
Only, it’s not so simple. As my T-shirt shows, this icon of London has evolved considerably over the years, and it’s been used for many more services than just the Tube. The seemingly standard corporate logo comes in near endless variety only hinted at in the 20 forms emblazoned across my torso.
Even so, this simplified evolutionary chart is a good place to begin in discussing the history of the roundel. It’s a story I need to get off my chest.
1. The Winged Wheel (1905)
The year is 1905. The suffragettes stage their first London protest. The word ‘hormone’ enters the English language. Greta Garbo and Henry Fonda are born; Jules Verne dies. Albert Einstein reformulates the universe. And somewhere in London, a draughtsman doodles some wings upon a wheel.
(It’s faded into the background on my shirt, but you can see a resplendent version here.)
The designer, whom some sources identify as a ‘Mr Crane’, was working on a new logo for the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), one of the main bus operators in the capital. The symbol of a winged wheel is an ancient one, which can be traced back to Greek representations of Hermes, and was a natural choice for a transport company.
The winged-wheel logo would only appear briefly on LGOC’s buses, but became a fixture on staff uniform badges. More importantly, it would become a key influence on the future Tube roundel.
2. The Bulls-eye (1908)
Much can, and has, been written about Frank Pick (1878-1941), a man who helped create the ‘identity’ of London Underground. His contributions were many and varied, but for today’s purposes, we can think of him as the main progenitor of the roundel.
In 1908, the 30-year-old Pick became publicity manager for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL). This company ran three deep-level tube lines: truncated versions of what are now the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Charing Cross branch of the Northern line. Pick sought to impose consistency across the lines, and part of that drive involved a common design for station platform names. After some experimentation, and inspired by the LGOC design, he alighted upon the idea of a blue bar across a red circle, which could stand out from the ubiquitous advertising. It was first trialed at St James’s Park in 1908. Versions of this early design can be seen today at Ealing Broadway and Covent Garden (as shown above).
The symbol and its successors would be commonly called the bullseye for decades to come, but for simplicity, I’m going to use the term ‘roundel’ from hereon.
3. Metropolitan diamond (1914)
The Metropolitan Railway — London’s original underground line, though by now much extended — was still an independent company, and liked to do things their own way. From 1914, they introduced a diamond logo for platform names, which had the ‘feel’ of Pick’s UERL symbol but also asserted Metropolitan independence. A pastiche sign can be seen at Moorgate. It was installed in 2013 to mark 150 years of the London Underground.
4. General (1920)
In 1912, Pick’s tube company (UERL) had bought out the old bus company (LGOC), and the design aesthetic began to creep across. Around the same time, a new roundel design was introduced with distinctive capitalisation on the first and last letters: UndergrounD. This style found its way onto the buses, which carried a ‘GeneraL’ logo from 1920. Note how the once-solid disc has now become a circle.
5. Shoreditch diamond (c.1913)
Another design used by the independent Metropolitan Railway. These green signs were deployed on the East London Railway, now part of the Windrush Line from around 1913. They apparently remained in place until the 1950s.
6. Maturing style (1924)
By the mid-20s, the roundel was settling down into its familiar style. Some variation remained, however, such as the red bordering around the nameplate shown in this example.
7. Johnston’s roundel (1925)
Edward Johnston is most noted for the Johnston family of typefaces, which are still used across London transport more than a century after his first version (commissioned, of course, by Frank Pick). But Johnston also did much to standardise the roundel. Working on its design from 1915, he would eventually write an exact specification of standard proportions, colours and lettering. The example shown here is very close to the design still in place in the 2020s. We’ve since lost the ‘ribbon’ styling around the border, though vintage examples can still be found across the network.
8. London Transport (1933)
1933 was a watershed moment in the story, with the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board, commonly abbreviated to London Transport. It brought together many of the hitherto separate companies that had overseen trains, trams, trolleybuses and buses in the London area. The roundel could now spread its wings further (even though it hadn’t sported wings since the old LGOC days). London Transport’s own parental roundel had to have a wider name bar than usual to fit in the long name.
9. Wide application (1935)
London Transport put the roundel to work. Hard. It now wandered beyond the purposes of platform names, to play various roles in signage, marketing and even architecture. Charles Holden was particularly deft at weaving the symbol into his tube station designs, slipping it into windows and raising it on flagpoles.
10. Trolleybuses (1935)
Johnston had adapted his roundel to services beyond the London Underground from the mid-1920s. The evolution continued in the 30s. This distinctive T-bearing roundel was first used to symbolise the trolleybus network from 1935.
11. Trams (1936)
Today, the tram network is confined to the deep south of London, and carries a green roundel. The original network was much more widespread, and was represented by blue roundels like this. Note that all the letters are by now the same height. None of this capital ‘T’, capital ‘S’ malarky.
12. Trolleybus Tram (1948)
I’m not entirely sure how this unsatisfying tangerine effort was used — perhaps as a combined symbol for trams and trolleybuses. Whatever, it’s my least favourite roundel on the t-shirt.
13. Bus and coach stop (1949)
A janus of a roundel, introduced at thousands of bus stops across the capital from the late 40s. The two colour schemes encompass both regular London bus routes, and also Green Line routes out to the surrounding commuter towns. The words ‘compulsory’ and request indicate that regular buses were mandated to stop, while the coaches would only pull up on request.
14. Railways roundel (1950)
A generic roundel used to represent the various underground railways collectively — both tube lines and cut-and-cover routes like the Metropolitan. Note that, by this time, the standard roundel had lost its border to create a simplified silhouette.
15. London Transport black and white (1960)
Badly faded on my t-shirt, this simple outline roundel was used to represent London Transport in the 1960s.
16. Victoria Line (1965)
This special one-off roundel was created to promote the Victoria line, the first wholly new deep-level line in half a century. The surviving example pictured here can be found at the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. .
17. Red Arrow (1968)
From the late 1960s, London Transport introduced so-called Red Arrow services. These made use of longer single-decker buses, to make swift and short journeys across central London. The buses had few seats, to pack in as many commuters as possible. The services lasted, in much-reduced form, well into the 21st century. They were initially marked out with black roundels, as shown here
18. Underground (1972)
By the 1970s, the roundel was considered the official logo of London Transport. This example shows an updated version used to promote Underground services, following a review by the London Transport Design Panel. The word ‘roundel’ was also adopted as the official name for the logo at this time. The earliest use of the word by the press that I can find comes from 1976.
19. London Buses (1987)
Another tangerine nightmare introduced in the 80s to encapsulate London bus services. The roundel coincided with the creation of London Regional Transport in 1984, which saw buses and trains operated from a national level, rather than by local government. According to London Transport Museum, it was phased out in 1994, and is surely little-missed.
20. Elizabeth line (2022)
The Elizabeth line, launched in 2022, is not classed as a Tube line. It has larger trains in a deep-level tunnel, and so is classified as a separate mode of transport to the wider Tube. Hence, it gets its own roundel, in a fetching shade of purple.
It is the final symbol on my t-shirt, but the roundelverse rarely stands still for long. Already, TfL has introduced another official roundel to promote its Superloop bus services. Others will surely follow. And then, finally, we have a whole sidebar of ‘alternative’ roundels…
Further variations on a theme
The roundel has been with us now for over a century. It is a logo popular with both Londoners and visitors, widely recognised as a symbol of London itself.
In recent years, Transport for London has got a bit playful with its emblem. Alternative versions are regularly deployed. We’ve seen Remembrance roundels, Coronation roundels and Pride roundels; a heart-shaped roundel (below) to mark 160 years of the Underground; children’s roundels and artists’ roundels.
Somewhat controversially, the roundel has also been adapted by sponsors to generate revenue for TfL. Sony Playstation had its four controller symbols turned into roundels during 2020 (though very few saw them thanks to the pandemic). Green Park was converted to ‘Green Planet’ to promote a BBC television series; Bond Street became Burberry Street at the behest of the clothing company. Most groansomely of all, Piccadilly Circus boldy changed to Picardilly Circus, and the roundel became a Starfleet logo, to promote a new show centred on the greatest captain.
Our story started with a black and white image of a winged wheel from 120 years ago. “From so simple a beginning,” said Charles Darwin, possibly about something else, “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”. I am proud to wear some of those subspecies across my chest.
Next week: a tour of my DLR-themed underpants. If you’re lucky.
Thanks for reading! As ever, I’d love to hear your comments below, or email me any time on matt@londonist.com. I’ve only scratched the surface with roundel history. A more detailed account can be found in Mark Overden’s London Underground by Design (affiliate Bookshop link). If you want to get your own roundel T-shirt, you’ll find it in London Transport Museum shop.
Excellent roundel round-up. My parents have an enamel coach & bus sign (13) in the garden, a legacy of dad's lifetime working for London Buses. Did you know you can see the original artwork for many of these at the St Bride Institute?
What a brilliant post. So fascinating.