In 1908, Pick was made publicity manager of London Underground. Although he had no background in art or design, he had strong ideas about how both could be used to promote the Underground.

Pick's posters

Pick began by commissioning colourful posters showing London attractions which could be reached by the Underground. At the time, the only posters displayed in stations were commercial adverts, or official announcements without pictorial content. To help people distinguish his new posters from the commercial adverts, Pick put up illuminated boards at station entrances where they were displayed alongside the Tube maps.

His aim was to change the way people saw the Underground. For most people, it was simply a means of getting to and from work. Pick wanted to encourage people to use the Tube to travel in their leisure time - to visit parks, museums, cinemas, theatres and historic houses. This was not just to increase income for the Underground, but also to educate people and improve their lives.

At first, Pick commissioned the posters from printing firms who employed their own artists. By the 1920s, he was directly commissioning posters from leading young artists - illustrators, such as Edward Bawden, and painters, such as Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash. Every Underground station now became a gallery for a constantly changing art exhibition. It was through Pick's posters that most British people were introduced to new European art movements, such as Cubism, Vorticism, Futurism and Surrealism.

Pick's posters were rarely designed to sell specific services. In 1927, he wrote that his purpose was "the establishment of goodwill and good understanding between the passengers and the companies... Even when the purpose has been to secure passengers it has been the practice to proceed by indirect means. To create a feeling of restlessness, a distaste for the immediate surroundings, to revive that desire for change, which all inherit from their barbarian ancestors."

Edward Johnston

Pick was unhappy with the typefaces used by his poster artists, and decided that the Underground needed its own distinctive lettering, to distinguish official posters and signs from the station's commercial adverts. So he commissioned the leading calligrapher, Edward Johnston (1872-1944) to design a typeface with “the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods” while “belonging unmistakably to the 20th century”. Most important was that it should be clear and legible across a Tube platform.

For inspiration, Johnston looked back to the capital letters in Ancient Roman stone inscriptions. He then designed letters based on squares and circles - his 'O' is a perfect circle while the 'N' has two sides of a square and a diagonal. The lines are all of equal bold thickness, and there are no serifs (end strokes). The lettering, called Johnston Sans ('without' serifs), was introduced in 1916. A slightly modified version, called New Johnston, is still used by London Transport today.

In 1918, Pick asked Johnston to redesign the roundel, first used as the symbol of the Underground in 1907. Johnston changed this from a solid red disc to the red circle crossed by a blue bar still used today. The bar carried the word ''Underground" or the name of a station, using Johnston's typeface.

From strength to strength

Pick rose through the ranks of the Underground management, becoming joint managing director in 1928 and then, in 1933, chief executive of the newly formed London Passenger Transport Board. This gave him even greater scope to introduce good design throughout London Transport.

Pick took an interest in every detail, from the design of bus shelters and seat upholstery, to lighting and litter bins. He wanted it all to demonstrate a modern, confident and efficient system. Nothing was better suited for this purpose than Harry Beck's 1933 Tube map, which used Johnston's typeface and iconic roundel.

Modernist stations

In the 1920s and 1930s, Pick commissioned leading modern architect Charles Holden (1875-1960) to design a series of new stations on the Northern and Piccadilly Lines. At Arnos Grove, Park Royal, Southgate, Chiswick Hall and Sudbury Town, Holden introduced a bold, modernist style, based on simple forms such as cylinders and cubes, using brick and concrete. There was little decoration, for Holden distrusted what he described as "the tricks of architectural ornament" and said that his motto was "When in doubt, leave it out". The form of a building should follow its function.

''Lorenzo the Magnificent of our age''

In his 1942 obituary, Pick was described by the art historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, as “the greatest patron of the arts whom this century has so far produced in England and indeed the ideal patron of our age”. Referring to an earlier Renaissance art patron, Pevsner declared that Frank Pick was the "Lorenzo the Magnificent of our age".

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