Frank Pick Hon. RIBA (23 November 1878 – 7 November 1941) was a British transport administrator. After qualifying as a solicitor in 1902, he worked at the North Eastern Railway, before moving to the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in 1906. He was chief executive officer and vice-chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board from its creation in 1933 until 1940.
Pick had a strong interest in design and its use in public life. He steered the development of the London Underground's corporate identity by commissioning eye-catching commercial art, graphic design and modern architecture, establishing a highly recognisable brand, including the first versions of the roundel and typeface still used today.
Under his direction, the UERL's Underground network and associated bus services expanded considerably, reaching out into new areas and stimulating the growth of London's suburbs. His impact on the growth of London between the world wars led to his being likened to Baron Haussmann and Robert Moses.
Pick's interest extended beyond his own organisation. He was a founding member and later served as president of the Design and Industries Association. He was also the first chairman of the Council for Art and Industry and regularly wrote and lectured on design and urban planning subjects. For the government, Pick prepared the transport plan for the mass evacuation of civilians from London at the outbreak of war and produced reports on the wartime use of canals and ports.
Frank Pick was born on 23 November 1878 at Spalding, Lincolnshire. He was the first child of five born to draper Francis Pick and his wife Fanny Pick (née Clarke). Pick's paternal grandfather, Charles Pick, was a farmer in Spalding who died in his forties, leaving eight children. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Clarke, was a blacksmith and Wesleyan lay preacher. As a child, Pick was bookish, preferring to read and build collections of moths and butterflies and objects found on the beach rather than take part in sports.
He lived at 27 Bridge Street, where he was born. His father had drapery business Pick & Dinsdale, from the 1870s. By the 1900s, the shop was owned by Berrills Ltd; Berrills closed in 1971. His father died in late June 1922.
Before becoming a draper, Pick's father had had an ambition to become a lawyer and he encouraged his son to follow this career. Pick attended St Peter's School in York on a scholarship, and was articled to a York solicitor, George Crombie, in March 1897. He qualified in January 1902 and completed a law degree at the University of London in the same year, but did not apply to practice.
In 1902, Pick began working for the North Eastern Railway. He worked first in the company's traffic statistics department before becoming assistant to the company's general manager, Sir George Gibb in 1904. In 1904, Pick married Mabel Mary Caroline Woodhouse. The couple had no biological children. They did however have an adopted daughter, named Constance.
In 1906, Gibb was appointed managing director of the UERL. At Gibb's invitation, Pick also moved to the UERL to continue working as his assistant. The UERL controlled the District Railway and, during 1906 and 1907, opened three deep-level tube lines – the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Bakerloo tube), the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (Hampstead tube) and the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (Piccadilly tube).
The UERL had financial problems. Ticket prices were low and passenger numbers were significantly below the pre-opening estimates. The lower than expected passenger numbers were partly the result of competition between the UERL's lines and those of the other tube and sub-surface railway companies. The spread of street-level electric trams and motor buses, replacing slower, horse-drawn road transport, also took a large number of passengers away from the trains.
By 1908, Pick had become publicity officer responsible for marketing and it was at this time that, working with the company's general manager Albert Stanley, he began developing the strong corporate identity and visual style for which the London Underground later became famous, including the introduction of the "UNDERGROUND" brand. Pick's philosophy on design was that "the test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use. If it fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will make it any better; it will only make it more expensive, more foolish."
Pick became traffic development officer in 1909 and commercial manager in 1912. Albert Stanley replaced Gibb as managing director in 1910. During 1912 and 1913, the UERL increased its control over transport services in London by purchasing two tube railways, the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) and Central London Railway (CLR), and a number of bus and tram companies. One of Pick's responsibilities was to increase passenger numbers, and he believed that the best way to do so was by encouraging increased patronage of the company's services outside peak hours. He commissioned posters which promoted the Underground's trains and London General Omnibus Company's (LGOC's) buses as a means of reaching the countryside around London and attractions within the city. Realising that variety was important to maintain travellers' interest, he commissioned designs from artists working in many different styles.
At the same time, he rationalised bus routes to ensure that they complemented and acted as feeder services for the company's railway lines, tripling the number of LGOC-operated routes during 1912 and extending the area covered to five times its previous size. Sunday excursion services to leisure destinations were implemented to fully utilise otherwise idle buses and agreements were established with rural bus operators to coordinate services rather than compete with them.
Pick introduced a common advertising policy, improving the appearance of stations by standardising poster sizes, limiting the number used and controlling their positioning. Before he took control of advertising, posters had been stuck up on any available surface on station buildings and platform walls in a crowded jumble of shapes and sizes that led to complaints from passengers that it was difficult to find the station name. Pick standardised commercial poster sizes on printers' double crown sheets, arranging these in organised groups to enable the station name to be easily seen. The Underground's own promotional posters were smaller, using single or paired double royal sheets, and were arranged separately from the commercial advertising. Pick described the process: "after many fumbling experiments I arrived at some notion of how poster advertising ought to be. Everyone seemed quite pleased and I got a reputation that really sprang out of nothing."
To make the Underground Group's posters and signage more distinctive, he commissioned calligrapher and typographer Edward Johnston to design a clear new typeface. Pick specified to Johnston in 1913 that he wanted a typeface that would ensure that the Underground Group's posters would not be mistaken for advertisements; it should have "the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods" and belong "unmistakably to the twentieth century". Johnston's sans serif "Underground" typeface, (now known as Johnston) was first used in 1916 and was so successful that, with minor modifications in recent years, it is still in use today.
In conjunction with his changes to poster display arrangements, Pick experimented with the positioning and sizing of station name signs on platforms, which were often inadequate in number or poorly placed. In 1908, he settled on an arrangement where the sign was backed by a red disc to make it stand out clearly, creating the "bulls-eye" device – the earliest form of what is today known as the roundel. In 1909, Pick started to combine the "bulls-eye" and the "UNDERGROUND" brand on posters and station buildings, but was not satisfied with the arrangement.