On 28 Jan, 20:23, Mizter T wrote:
snip
Of course the beauty of stylised symbols is that they can represent
all of these things. My comments were specifically in relation to how
the original 'bar and circle' device, which was used on station
nameboards from 1908, came to be - it can be seen here on the platform
of Dover Street station:http://www.ltmcollection.org/roundel...ory.html?IXpag...

Looking at it again I can also imagine the bar as representing a
railway carriage. As I said, it can represent whatever you wish to
read into it.

I dare say there's always the possibility that we're all looking at it
in too narrow a manner, i.e. from the perspective of transport. It
might be instructive to look at other examples of contemporary
'graphic design' (though it wasn't called that) from around the same
time, for example advertising and packaging, and also to spread to net
wider and look at other insignia, for example that derived from the
military.

The problem can be with a logo that too many things can be read in it,
so it becomes meaningless, for example the Tyneside (later Tyne &
Wear) PTE logo was described as "an indescribable thing with the Tyne
running through the middle" and the Greater Glasgow PTE one as "two
broken coat hangers", and to some the London Country logo (now adapted
bby Carousel, High Wycombe) has been described as a flying polo mint,
a gun carriage and various other things... In contrast NBCs arrow
formed out of a letter N and its shadow was rather neat.