Speaker: Mark Ovenden
6 July 2023
Since the first commercial flight in 1919 airlines initially needed to show a wary public where their services ran and in doing so created some of the most iconic and beautiful travel posters. Spanning a century of art and design, from art nouveau images of the colonies, through Art Deco and streamlined planes to satellite images of the planet, this talk is world-wide journey, a visual delight inspiring dreams of far flung destinations in vivid colours and styles.
Profile
Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster and author who specialises in graphic design, cartography and architecture in public transport with an emphasis on underground rapid transit.
His first book Metro Maps of the World published in 2003 is a guide to the diagrams, plans and maps of underground rapid transit system including images ranging from photos of the systems to rare and historical maps. Paris Metro Style in map and station design was published November 2008. Railway Maps of the World was published in May 2011 in the USA and a British edition was produced in September 2011. London Underground by Design was published in January 2013. A celebration of the Johnston typeface centenary and 90th Anniversary of Gill Sans was published in 2016, and in July 2017 Mark fronted a television documentary for BBC Four on the subject of Johnston and Gill. Then in November 2018 he presented a documentary for BBC Radio 4 on skyscrapers.