Evans is a place on Earth: Sign Language:Margaret Calvert @ the Design Museum.

Margaret Calvert may not be a household name but you will, each and every one of you, be familiar with her work. It's helped you get where you are today and though it's unlikely many of us have ever spent much time pondering the design behind her street signs, tube maps, and railway station information boards that shows just how effective the design of Margaret Calvert is.

'Road Works' reflective aluminium road sign

Bold lettering, simple colour schemes, and easy to read fonts are all important when you're rushing to catch the 0811 to Crewe, speeding down the M6, or working our which line on the Tyne and Wear metro you need to take to get to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland. The curators behind Margaret Calvert:Woman at work, a free exhibition at London's Design Museum in Holland Park, call Calvert the "graphic designer who created the visual backdrop to modern life in Britain" - and they're not wrong.

She's even got an OBE for her work. Her pioneering designs, often in collaboration with Jack Kinneir, defined the look of the welfare state and are still as fresh, clear, and quietly innovative as they were when she started out in the 1950s. That's why they're still about. It must be a joy for Calvert, now in her mid-eighties, to travel around the country and see her work everywhere and it must also give her some sense of satisfaction that she is finally being celebrated for that work.

Calvert arrived in Britain from South Africa, where she was born, in 1957 as a student and graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 1957 with a specialism in illustration and printmaking. Kinneir employed her, first as his assistant, and described her as "the student who applied herself most rigorously to what she was doing". When on a project, he remarked, she "worked like a maniac".

A Prize for Art:an autobiography by Edward Wakeford (1961)

Calvert's first commission was a book cover for an Edward Wakeford autobiography and she employed the language of modern art to give it a classic, minimalist, feel that still hasn't dated. Before that, however, she had already worked, for Kinneir, in travel design. A 1958 copy of Design magazine looked at 'wayfinding' at the new Gatwick Airport and though the cover was designed by Ken Garland, Calvert was involved in the content for both the magazine and the design of the airport signage.

The work impressed Sir Colin Anderson, then chairman of the P&O Orient Line, and he commissioned Kinneir to design a baggage labelling system for his cruise ship empire. This gave Calvert a chance to work on her lettering and, later, brochures for Tunhill Ltd gave her an opportunity to further hone those skills.

Gatwick edition of Design, no. 116 (1958)

Margaret Calvert's London studio (2020)

The opening of Britain's first motorway, the M1, in 1959 radically transformed the national transport network and, under commission of the Ministry of Transport, Kinneir and Calvert worked for seven years replacing the haphazard, dangerous, inconsistent, and, in some cases, almost illegible existing signs with ones that were easy to read, logical, and consistent.

The letterform designed for this project was given the oh so functional name of Transport and the signs were designed so that they could be read from a distance and when motoring at speed. Each and every aspect of legibility was considered from layout to size to colour. Even the spacing between letters was discussed. These road signs ended up being three times larger than those that came before them and were so successful that they are still, with only minor alterations, in use today and have been copied in many other countries around the world.

Legibility test by Road Research Laboratory at RAF Benson airfield - Transport Research Laboratory (c.1959)

Model for road sign (c.1960s)

Margaret Calvert can help you get to Windsor or Uxbridge but she can also show you the way to Kavala or Umm Suqeim. She can also warn you about hazards you may encounter en route and tell you what speed you should be driving at, or below. She personally designed many of the pictograms we all know and love today. From the 'Road Works' or 'man with a heavy umbrella' sign that tops this blog to the 'Children' crossing sign in which the elder, female, child is based on herself.

The nearest thing to a self-portrait in the entire exhibition! The red triangle and white background with shadowy figures is basic and could even look austere but Calvert has drawn the children holding hands and skipping along happily, giving the sign a warm and human feel. You'd feel bad if you ran those kids over.

'Children' reflective aluminium road sign

Reconstructed Metro cube - Nexus (2020)

Calvert has now given her a name to a typeface. Originally designed to give the French suburban town of St-Quentin-en-Yvelines its own visual identity, the 'slab-serif' design was rejected for being 'too English' but was picked up in Newcastle where it became the default typeface for the Tyne and Wear Metro system that opened in 1980.

Bus and ferry networks in the region also picked up on a design that Calvert herself felt reflected the distinctive architecture of Newcastle and the surrounding area. It certainly looks effective, and aesthetically pleasing, placed against the cold grey concrete of the station walls and the bright yellow paint of the hand rail.

Map of Tyne and Wear Metro (2020)

It wasn't the first time that Calvert and Kinneir had been tasked with rail network design. Although British Railways was nationalised in 1948 it continued for over a decade being operated regionally and with no overarching design style. Calvert and Kinneir came up with the, again, uber functional Rail Alphabet style (using a typeface not dissimilar to Helvetica) which was designed to be read easily by slow moving passengers and to incorporate Gerry Barney's then new, but now iconic and barely in use anymore, double arrow symbol.

It went on to set the standard for railway graphics across Europe (Danish State Railways adopted it almost immediately) and was unveiled at an exhibition titled The New Face of British Rail(ways) at the Design Centre in Islington. Changing over to the new design was a big operation as the British Rail Passenger Network at the time had four thousand locomotives and two thousand stations. For some reason, Sealink got in on the act and had their ships repainted with the new design too.

Special British Rail edition of Design, no. 193 (1965)

Map of British Rail Passenger Network - David Lawrence (1968)

Even the NHS used it. As well as Belfast and Glasgow airports and those further afield in Sydney, Melbourne, and Bahrain. Rail Alphabet remained British Rail's corporate identity until the railways were disastrously, for customers if not shareholders, re-privatised by John Major's Conservative government in the early nineties.

Today, the infrastructure is owned and operated by the publicly owned Network Rail and in the last three years, Calvert has, with her team, been commissioned to redesign Rail Alphabet for a new age. Never one to show off, Calvert came up with .... Rail Alphabet 2. Its main difference seemingly being its adaptability for use in the digital sphere.

Calvert's use of easy to understand names is consistent with her use of easy to read (and understand) design but there is a sense of humour at work too. The straight bat she plays during these projects is balanced with a more playful side that The Design Museum devote the final section of the exhibition too.

When the co-curator (along with Grayson Perry) of 2018's Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, the brilliantly monikered Humphrey Ocean, confessed a fondness for Calvert's 'Road Works' signs she mocked up a 'Woman at Work' version for the show (another self-portrait!), with frequent collaborator Henrik Kubel she redesigned the 'Children' crossing sign to show some of Mickey Mouse's friends or relatives crossing a road in order to help Disney teach kids about road safety, she's given the 30 speed limit sign a camp and colourful makeover, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the M1 in 2010 she deconstructed one of its famous road signs.

Almost as if to let you know she gets modern art. Which she clearly does. But she excels at design. If her signs and typefaces weren't so universally understood and identifiable these cheeky interpretations would make no sense. Because they are, we smile at them. Margaret Calvert's work is so powerful and effective that it barely needs explaining. In that respect, I was glad that the show the Design Museum provided for her was more of a celebration. A very worthy one.