This poster is one of a series of eight produced by award winning design consultancy, Pentagram Design Limited, for their exhibition ‘Overlooked’ (2016) at the London Design Festival. The exhibition showcased a series of screen printed posters featuring rubbings taken from 22 London street covers, from Islington to Kensington. The project celebrated street covers as impeccable examples of industrial design and aimed to show that 'a city’s beauty isn’t limited to art galleries or grand architecture, and that intricate design is everywhere'. The exhibition followed the success of the award-winning Pentagram Paper (No. 45) by the same name.

The design team, led by design partner Marina Willer, searched the city to find the best examples and most of the iron street covers bear the name of the foundry and location where they were cast, but not the name of the designer. The Pentagram designers adopted the 19th century practice of taking rubbings of religious icons by 'placing paper over the brass and rubbing with a drawing medium, usually a black wax heelball, to create a detailed negative image of the original object'. The covers have been printed in layers with fluorescent inks.

Each cover was produced a raised design which was not only decorative but also served the practical function of preventing pedestrians from slipping in icy or wet weather. Many of the covers were installed by 19th and early 20th century utility companies who provided London residents with new services such as water and sewage, gas and electricity, telegraph and telephones through subterranean tunnels.

Marina Willer is an award-winning graphic designer and filmmaker with an MA in Graphic Design from the Royal College of Art. Before joining Pentagram as a partner, she was head creative director at Wolff Olins in London. During her career, Willer has led the design of major brand identity schemes including Maggie’s cancer centres, Battersea Dog’s and Cat’s Home, Tate, Amnesty International, Southbank Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Oxfam and the Natural History Museum.