The meaning of life can only be found in subterranean mass transit systems

That's right, it's time to go underground.

What’s the most boring thing you’re sort of interested in? And don’t say advertising, you cheeky bastard.

For me, it’s underground mass transit systems. I think they tell you a lot about the people that made them and use them.

The Paris Metro is made by people who fundamentally do not want you to be in Paris, you filthy tourist. The Moscow Metro is a time capsule, from the extravagant “art for the people” designs of the post-revolution period, via propaganda exhortations of the “Great Patriotic War” years, to the brutalist functionality of the stagnant 70s. And because it’s Russia, the knacker-level security barriers place no value on human life, as I found out first hand when I visited in ‘07.

That’s not an art gallery, that’s Kievskaya metro station.

Even the London Underground is the perfect encapsulation of the British culture that made it. It doesn’t fucking work properly, it’s expensive, nobody would invest in building one in Birmingham or Manchester, and it’s intrinsically linked to our obsession with the “Blitz Spirit.”

And then there’s Berlin. Last month, we spent a few days in the German capital, and the sheer efficiency of the Berlin U-Bahn broke our tiny British minds. That and the fact that there’s seemingly no through line at all to the architecture. Some of it’s green tiles and curved roofs, some of it is faux-Roman columns made out of steel, and there’s one station with little sparkly lights above granite so dark grey it’s almost black.

Three stations, three different designs. Four stops apart.

It’s almost disorientating. There’s no coherency of the visual message. Even the station signs have different designs, fonts and styles. The UX is almost perfect, but the design keeps knocking you out of your stride.

That borderline incoherent design might be fun for an underground mass transit system, but unless you’re running Lings Cars, it’s a bad idea for your marketing collateral.

The words’ll just end up getting lost. Not unlike Laura and I after eight beers in Heckmeck Kneipe on a Tuesday night.

Something mint - this series of ads on the U-Bahn that made me stop dead and text Martin and Ben

Everyone in Berlin speaks brilliant English, which is great because my German is absolutely abysmal. So the Berlin School of English must be doing something good. The first ad is at the stop closest to Checkpoint Charlie. Upstairs is the famous sign about entering the American Sector, and downstairs is this gem. Simple, and perfectly positioned.

A few stops along is this second ad which I can’t make my mind up about. As a native English speaker who’s watched all the same films as those bald 50-somethings daydreaming about Commando Comics on the tube, I get the reference and think it’s a cracker.

And if you’re a German who understands English culture and our obsession¹ with the Second World War, then maybe it’s a great line. But if you’re that immersed in Englishness, are you the audience for a school that teaches Germans how to communicate in English?

Either way, it made me stop my holiday dead so I could see what my HNW collaborators thought. So good work, that advertising firm.

A quick PS

Want something a bit meatier to read? Head over to the HNW blog and take a look at my thoughts on how and why Manchester City Council’s homelessness charity needs to think a little bit more about messaging.

When the message is this crucial, why wouldn’t you put it first?

1. I have to hold my hands up here. I listen to a twice-a-week podcast that features a comic and a historian doing nothing but talking about World War Two. Maybe it’s time to embrace my inner baldness?