notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Proposed flag designs for a “Great Britain” in the early 1600s, when James became king of both still-independent countries, as covered in BBC Radio 4’s The Flag That Failed, part of the Shakespeare’s Restless World season.

Handily, there’s a transcript available:

Looking at our flag designs, you can see the intractable politics of union being played out in graphic form. All the designs stumble on the one key problem facing James’s project: how do you combine two kingdoms, but allow each to retain equal status? Crudely put, which national cross gets to be on top, St George or St Andrew’s, and does size matter?

If you’ve never seen a Union Jack, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an even-handed solution to this particular problem.

The programme page has a zoomable image of the designs. As it was, in 1606 a recognisable Union Flag that has evolved into the current design was used, although England and Scotland were not formally joined as a single country until 1707, after the failure of the Darien Scheme (as covered by CP Grey in one of his informative videos).

Oyster, Transport for London’s smart card, was introduced in July 2003, but for the first eight years of its life it was wonderfully change-free. The top row of these Oyster card images shows that the only changes were to the TfL roundel, first from red (associated with buses) to white, and then adding the old British Rail logo (now used by National Rail) once ATOC finally allowed sorted out allowing pre-pay on their services.

As early as 2007 there were Oyster visitor cards co-branded with the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2. There are still visitor travelcards, and there was also an attempt to fuse a debit card and NFC payment system with an Oyster card, although apparently that’s no longer available.

It was last year, however, after TfL took control of the Oyster brand, that they were really able to let rip with custom designs. After the success of last year’s Royal Wedding cards, as predicted, this year sees special cards for 2012 and Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee.

Me? I’ll be happy using my 2003 vintage, red-roundel card, even if nobody gets to see the front any more. (The nice thing about NFC cards? You don’t even have to take them out of your Tube map holder.)

Citymaps. Fast Co Design:

CityMaps is a view of New York City, Austin, and San Francisco through its logos alone. Rather than using satellite images, Street View, or legends for schools and restaurants, the map uses branding in its purest form — along with offers for all sorts of corresponding coupons — to help you discover somewhere you’d like to go.

(via)

Pentagram: New Work: Grand Central:

The new logo takes as its inspiration one of the landmark building’s most well known icons—the century-old Tiffany clock atop the information booth in the center of the Main Concourse. The stylized version of the clock, drawn by Joe Marianek, has its hands positioned at 7:13, or 19:13 in trainmaster’s time, a nod to the opening year.

I’m glad I’m not the only person who makes subtle references using time.

Wim Crouwel’s Rotterdam hexagon urban identity as seen at Kosmograd (via)

New direction for National Railway Museum at Creative Review’s blog.

The old Thames TV ident. I always thought that Tower Bridge looked a bit like a rocket.

(via psd)

Archives and the brilliant modernism of Theyre Lee-Elliott at Quad Royal:

This very pure, almost continental modernist design is by Theyre Lee-Elliott, who I’d never come across before. But it turns out that he also designed the archetypal airmail wings, as well as the Imperial Airways Speedbird logo, a design which endured beyond Imperial’s incorporation into BOAC and well into the time of British Airways. Those two designs alone – both classics which survived well past World War Two and beyond – should have been enough to secure [him] more fame than he currently has.