As regular readers to this blog might remember, I do like the patterns on public transport seats, specifically those on the tube. I even tried to do some design with them once and had my fascination outed by Design Week.

Anyway, Transport for London have this quirky tube campaign running at the moment, which invites you to guess whether the statements lovingly recreated from vintage patterns are true or false:

If you can’t bear not knowing the answers, check out the TfL site, where a little story sheds light on each one.

Also, feel free to join my neglected Flickr group to collect new patterns. And if you’ve taken a picture of a seat pattern, it probably qualifies for this group too…

Napoleon’s quote “A throne is only a bench covered in velvet” is currently getting all the attention as part of the latest Art on the Underground poster campaign in London. While I’m struggling to see the relevance of thrones and their upholstery to my life, I absolutely get this one which crops up less often.

This sums up the last couple of days for me.

From Animals on the Underground.

Check out this lovely video from Miami based production company Peliculas Ponder. It looks like an advertisement for the Madrid Metro, based around the idea of the view from below.

Lovely, and comes via Graham Linehan over at the illuminating Why That’s Delightful! I’d have embedded it on this page, but that’s bad internet manners.

Incidentally I travelled to work above ground today and largely on foot, as the tube was suspended and the sun was shining..

Always thought these would be a good idea…

I wrote a few days ago about Emma Clarke, the woman who does the voice for the London Undergound tube announcements. She had created a set of spoof announcements which were doing the rounds on the web. Some of them were quite funny.

Well, it seems that Transport for London weren’t so amused and Emma has been dropped as the voice of the tube as a result. A shining star of the TfL PR department said:

“London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Ms Clarke are experiencing severe delays.”

She was in all the papers today, so we did get to see what she looked like…

Also found this article about other iconic British voices…