Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir created the highly legible Rail Alphabet (1965) typeface for British Railways, thereby transforming the visual identity of the network, and making 'wayfinding' so much easier for the traveller. It was so successful that it was also used by state railway companies in other countries, for example Denmark, at Gatwick Airport, and in NHS hospitals. More recently, Margaret Calvert together with Henrik Kubel, was commissioned by Network Rail to design an updated version of the typeface, Rail Alphabet 2.

Up to the 1960s, there was no consistency in British road signs as local authorities could put up their own which lead to a confusion of typefaces, symbols, and colours. The huge task of designing a single system was given to Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir who carefully co-ordinated lettering, colours, shapes, and pictograms to create a system that has inspired modern road signs around the world. The "subtly British" (and witty) signs have survived virtually unaltered to the present day.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Margaret Calvert and colleague Jock Kinneir designed Britain's modern motorway sign system using their new Transport typeface in white on blue After testing (above, 1958), they realised that signs with upper and lower case letters rather than all-capitals, as in France for example, were much more legible at high speed, and so they have proved to be. 

The subject on the Post this week is Margaret Calvert who celebrated her 90th birthday earlier this year and is still working. Described as a design and typographical genius, she has had a long and illustrious career in what she prefers to call "commercial art" rather than the more recent title of "graphic design", and has had the gratification of seeing her work used not just widely, but everywhere in the UK.

This is Gertrude Harvey (1879-1966), wife and frequent model of Harold Harvey, in his painting Summer (1918, private collection). We see her against the background of the "Penwith countryside, on a summer's day...as she  inspects the colourful borders in a garden she has lovingly planted". Gardening in England this year has been difficult because of the heat and drought, so the idea of a little light flower-picking after the hard work of gardening sounds rather idyllic.

There is a lot to like about washing on lines in fine drying weather. The sounds, the flapping, the movement and dancing (‘the olé of a crimson towel,/
the cancan of a ra ra skirt’ as Simon Armitage puts it), the precision and patterns of pegging out, the folding, the crisp dryness. This is Wash Day on the Maine Coast (1934, Brandywine Conservancy Museum of Art) by NC Wyeth (1882-1945) which was found on the Instagram account of Lautus Press which has published a collection of poems celebrating washing lines.