Stations of the Ring – Berlin Typography
▻https://berlintypography.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/stations-of-the-ring
The fate of the Ringbahn after the war is as fascinating and convoluted as the story of the city itself. The Berlin Wall, of course, severed the line into two halves which functioned independently (although, as with all S-Bahn lines, service in both the East and West was run by the East German transit authority). Attempts to reconnect the circle after reunification resulted in nearly a decade of repairs and modifications: the circle finally re-opened in 2002 and the ‘Ring’ lines that are such a staple of the modern city’s transit network – the S41 and S42 – only took on their present form in 2006.
Because much of the Ringbahn has been renewed recently, the typography tends to follow the corporate style of the S-Bahn fairly closely. Platform signage is reasonably uniform and the entrances to the stations are often nondescript and functional, devoid of the classicising flourishes we find on the S1 or the delightful oddities of the Eastern lines. But, of course, there are points of typographic interest for those willing to seek them out.
A complete journey around the ring takes almost exactly an hour, but our typographical tour will be much quicker. We will begin in the West and move clockwise. There is little of note at Westkreuz, where the Stadtbahn and the Ringbahn intersect, but one stop to the north we reach the station now known as Messe Nord / ICC in honour of the nearby conference facility. For much of the twentieth century, however, the station was known as Witzleben, and that name is still preserved on one of the entrances.