Since this piece was written in 2016, a regime change at Transport for London caused the suppliers of destination displays to go over to LED dot-matrix electronics in 2020. With no apparent plan in place the two or three suppliers of such displays have been allowed to produce the layouts themselves and there is now no consistent approach, with many displays using letterforms distorted and often too big, with the resulting drop in legibility. I continue to receive complaints and wish to state here that the new displays are nothing to do with me. Any complaints should be directed to Transport for London.

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As noted on my Home Page, I have had a long-standing interest and respect for the work of Edward Johnston; the buttons and titles on this website being my own designs following his principles.

Some years ago now I was getting agitated by London’s bus destination blind displays and found myself discussing this at senior level within Transport for London. This led to a commission to re-design all of them, probably getting on for 9000 displays. With this well under way I wrote an article which was published in The Londoner (issue 7 April/May 2016). This was necessarily quite brief and has led to this more explanatory piece here.

Click on the link to the right to download the PDF.

If you are interested to see how bus blinds were produced before computer technology was used, have a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1rRva0tugc

The following link shows how the blinds are printed nowadays, from the artworks I provide to McKenna Brothers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgCay4OBjvA (2016)