Logomotive: Railroad Graphics and the American Dream - Hardcover

Ian Logan; Jonathan Glancey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1873329504 ISBN 13: 9781873329504

Publisher: Sheldrake Press, 2020

Synopsis

Logomotive is a visual tribute to the heyday of railroad graphics and design.

Arriving in America in 1968, the London designer Ian Logan was blown away by the logos and slogans he saw painted on the sides of freight trains rumbling down Main Street. In between designing fabrics for Mary Quant and Jeff Banks, he went back time after time with his camera, travelling across America, wandering into freight yards to record the Route of the Eagles, the Rebel Route, the Speedway to America's Playground and so many other mesmerizing advertising ideas of the day.

We were chatting to some guys in a bar, recalls Ian Logan, when the glasses started to rattle on the table and I heard a train approaching. He rushed out to see the train coming down the middle of the street. For Logan, on his first trip to the United States, this was the start of a lifelong graphic romance. One of the wagons was painted with a big circle with a heart in the middle and the slogan, Through the Heart of the South. What a logo! I'd never seen anything like it.

About this title

About the Author

Ian Logan was at the centre of the design revolution that marked the end of post-war austerity. He studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London (now Central St. Martin s), and won a scholarship to the Konstfack, Stockholm s University of Arts, Crafts and Design. In the early 1960s he joined JRM Design, a fabric print company set up by a group of Central graduates in an almost derelict building in London s East End. Ian and his partners produced prints for up-and-coming fashion designers such as Mary Quant and Jeff Banks, and a tin tray with a Middle Eastern-inspired motif that became enormously successful, first in Carnaby Street and then all over the UK.  Ian s passion for vintage railroad Americana was rooted in a Fifties and Sixties childhood attuned to the sounds of folk, skiffle and blues under the influence of his uncle, Ewan MacColl. It was hearing Lonnie Donegan s hit 'Rock Island Line  on the radio in 1961 that inspired Ian to pack up and go to America to see the names, the places and the trains for himself.  In the mid-1970s he set off in a new direction. Inspired by decorative Victorian tin boxes, he produced a range of tins for Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Whittard of Chelsea and the National Trust. Commissions came from France, the Netherlands and the United States, for which he developed the Americana range featuring diners, gasoline stations and collectable cars. His money boxes in the form of the iconic red British telephone kiosk became known all over the world. The journalist, author and broadcaster Jonathan Glancey is a trailblazing commentator on architecture and design, writing about buildings, cars, planes and trains with deep knowledge and infectious enthusiasm. The architecture and design editor of The Guardian from 1997 to 2012, he now reports on those topics for the website BBC Culture and newspapers and magazines worldwide. His obsession with trains began in childhood as he pored over picture books on rainy days, and eventually led him to drive an Indian Railways WP-class Pacific steam locomotive from Delhi to Chandigarh. It has inspired four books, The Train: A Photographic History (2004), John Betjeman on Trains (2006), Tornado: 21st Century Steam (2010) and Giants of Steam (2012), in addition to the Channel 4 mini-series Small Railway Journeys (2006).

Edition details

• Publisher: Sheldrake Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1873329504
• ISBN 13: 9781873329504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272