Advertising posters have been a familiar marketing tool for the London Underground. In the early 20th century, commercial artists were commissioned to produce attractive designs depicting scenes and events linked with travelling by tube. The genre developed its own artistic style and gave rise to many classic posters seen on walls inside and outside Underground stations.
Less well known is that there were also many smaller posters, often known as car cards or panel posters, mainly designed to appear inside the vehicles themselves. These smaller posters often featured the same attention to detail of their more famous counterparts, but have not previously been given the attention they deserve.
In Away from It all by Underground, Jonathan Riddell tells the background story to the development of these car cards and has reproduced many examples from their heyday. Each reproduction is accompanied by descriptive text describing the motivation behind its design or the specific event to which it relates.
Although the artists and designers of car cards may be less well known than their poster-designing contemporaries, the quality of their design is at least equivalent. 128 pages. Illustrated in colour throughout. Hardback.