History|The People’s Movement opposed the official choice of emblem. The background of the final solution is shrouded in obscurity.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
Two logos were originally proposed as the logo of the Helsinki Metro.
One was the audience’s favorite, but the other was the winner selected by the award jury.
The beloved emblem got behind it a popular movement.
In the end, neither of them got on the metro train.
Helsinki the metro’s logo could be very different if the public had been allowed to decide on the matter more than fifty years ago.
The M-sign at metro stations was not even included in the proposals from the beginning, but two different signs resulted in an emotional dispute.
Länsimetro’s first metro train from east to west in 2017.
All started when, in the 70s, they were looking for a logo for the subway project.
Metrotoimisto organized a competition for what would be chosen as the symbol of the new subway. A record number of proposals came in, a total of 4,825.
The award committee chose the winner of the competition Heikki Hollon in the minimalist creation “Tunnel”. The piece depicted a tunnel where two metro trains run parallel to each other.
However, he did not win over the audience in the tunnel. It soon got the nickname “pig’s snout” in the people’s mouths.
An exhibition was finally organized from the proposals, where one proposal rose above the others, becoming a great popular favorite.
This is how voters were attracted on the pages of Helsingin Sanomat.
Readers could send the answer by mail using a form.
Sympathetic the mole figure dug its way into people’s hearts.
“The mole” didn’t even make it to the medal positions in the official competition. This was also quoted in Helsingin Sanomat.
“Which is better than these metro signs?” HS asked its readers on April 18, 1971.
There were a lot of votes for this survey, more than 45,000.
One of the reasons for the noise may be that a gold watch worth 1,000 marks was raffled among the participants.
The vote however, the result was clear: “The happy mole” was the overwhelming winner.
A total of 32,367 people voted for the mole.
The people’s movement for the mole was not only seen in the pages of newspapers, although Hesar’s coverage of the mole certainly made the topic a general topic of conversation at the latest.
People even made stickers to express their support for the “Jolly Mole”.
In the 70s, Markku Lehmuskallio (in the middle) expressed his support for the mole by pasting a sticker representing it on his scooter helmet.
Also HSL’s communications specialist Tapio Tolmunen says that he heard that you could buy mole stickers at R-kiosks. One was even glued to the bow of the first test train, Tolmunen says.
Tolmunen has familiarized himself with the history of public transport in Helsinki. At the time of the mole recognition, he was still a child and the mole he was most familiar with was Zdeněk Miller animated character.
The popularity of the animated mole may have been one of the factors that made the soil suitable for the mole logo, Tolmunen suspects.
Make it official however, the emblem chosen in the competition was not seen in use at all. The “tunnel” was only used in test trains.
The origin of the M logo is a mystery even to Tolmuse, although it has been the symbol of the metro since the beginning of its operation.
“I have never come across information anywhere about when it was decided to use the M logo.”
However, Tolmunen suspects that behind the choice may be the desire to have a neutral, easy and clear logo after the uproar.
The picture shows the opening of the Helsinki metro in Itäkeskus in 1982. At the time of this opening, the M logo, which is already familiar today, was in use.
During its existence, Metro has gone through many changes. Perhaps the biggest is the opening of Länsimetro after a long wait in 2017.
Now the railway station’s metro station is closed for renovation and HKL is building new ones in Helsinki metro trains. The new subways are supposed to be quieter, but the familiar color would not be changing.
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