HARRY BECK’S London Tube map of 1931 is recognised globally as a graphic icon. Yet few recognise the name of the creator of its equally memorable typeface, the Uruguay-born calligrapher Edward Johnston.

This year marks the centenary of the inauguration of the Johnston typeface, used not only on the map but for all the Tube’s public information signage. Modernist, lucid and emanating serenity in the visual noise of an increasingly complex world, it’s designed to never be confused with advertising and has established one of the most durable corporate typographic identities to be found anywhere.

Johnston’s brief was to create a lettering system for London Underground that would have the “the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods” and belong “unmistakably to the 20th century.”