Theres a fine line between wanting the railway to be successful vs what spotters want. Clear, concise and clean is needed, that will be pretty boring to those wanting flamboyant designs and colours but it is functional. A middle ground is required.
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Stations rebranded to Great British Railways design / Rail Alphabet 2
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SteveyBee131
Member
I saw another at Doncaster today but couldn't get a picture as was laden with luggage.
Atop the stairs on the 'upside' (platforms 1 to 3) island, is a sign directing passengers to platform 1, on which the arrow points downwards. It's trying to say turn back on yourself as you reach the top of the stairs, but the unknowing could easily think it means to down the stairs you've just come up! An arrow pointing across then down would perhaps be better to convey the right message.
Looks like a classic Friday afternoon situation where somebody realised they didn't have access to RA2 far too late and had to get the graphic made so just googled for a copy of original Rail Alphabet in hope nobody would notice.
the sniper
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Someone should let Chris Green know where he went wrong.
Chiltern006
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was going to say that looks suspiciously like RA1. the shape of the t gave it away
Id class NSE as the middle ground...ok the livery wouldve been a bit loud at the time, but it was ultra drab before then
These signs are not clear though! There is branding, not even a border, to make them stand out from the background and all the other signs and adverts around the station.
I would point out that we probably have the best road signage out there (certainly compared to the European countries I have driven through) and they use colours and borders to make them stand out.
Also branding is important, its a bit inconsistent that private companies are slated for scrimping and being all about profit yet now we are being told they waste their money on "flamboyant" signage - they wouldnt do it if it didn't matter, and I think Virgin proved that in spades.
Branding, or at least a distinctive house style, is important not just for commercial reasons. It's important for expressing the corporate identity of the organisation. Hopefully we are getting away from competing and clashing imagery and back towards a recognisable visible 'look' for the national rail network (lowercase until we decide what to call it; I'm not a fan of 'Great British' anything - too Brexity for me).
Simplicity is good, but not banality or such minimalist styling that the signage could be anywhere or for anything. London Transport (aka the LPTB or TfL) was the pioneer of this in the 1930s and it has not completely lost its touch. The roundel and the Johnston typeface make it obvious where you are and which bits of signage are important to you as a passenger. The BR logo and Rail Alphabet have served the same purpose for the national network. Updating this is fine, but tinkering with it arbitrarily, and confusing matters by imposing local or TOC-only variations, is not helpful. Even after several decades of privatisation, most people recognise the former and are confused by the latter (especially if the train they are travelling on is branded differently from the station they are travelling from.)
Simplicity is good, but not banality or such minimalist styling that the signage could be anywhere or for anything. London Transport (aka the LPTB or TfL) was the pioneer of this in the 1930s and it has not completely lost its touch. The roundel and the Johnston typeface make it obvious where you are and which bits of signage are important to you as a passenger. The BR logo and Rail Alphabet have served the same purpose for the national network. Updating this is fine, but tinkering with it arbitrarily, and confusing matters by imposing local or TOC-only variations, is not helpful. Even after several decades of privatisation, most people recognise the former and are confused by the latter (especially if the train they are travelling on is branded differently from the station they are travelling from.)
This isn't being done to stop companies spending their money branding themselves though, this was a project inititated by Network Rail and had GBR not happened, these companies would have still been able to continue to brand everything but the signage. With your Virgin example, the signage at the end of their franchise was the same black and red they put up in the 90s/00s, so it wasn't that important for them or their brand and could have been standardised with no effect on them.
In regards to this point, the company that made these new guidelines considered contrast, accessibility and such when they were creating it, and determined that white was the best choice in order to stand out after trying out multiple colours. Road signage is a whole other kettle of fish to deal with and has totally different requirements to railway stations, so they can't really be compared fairly. (Our road signs were of course designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir, who both designed the original black on white British Rail signage and Calvert also worked on this new version.)
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On the analogy of motorway signage though, there is a consistent look and all service stations are signposted with the same typeface in white on blue, whatever additional advertising the companies that operate them might put up. In the same way, the name boards on station platforms ought to be of a standard format; if the TOC (if we are still going to have such things) wants to add a discreet logo, OK, but not if it dominates.
Chiltern006
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Heworth has one way out sign on the Newcastle bound platform in RA2 black and yellow. Metrocentre also has them done too
NorthernSpirit
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Could it have come out of one of the illuminated run in boards?
Would non-enthusiasts even notice the train was branded differently. Local adaptions of station signage are fine - they just have to stand out, not disappear in the background.
I dont agree with the way they did it. They blurred the background and compared sign colours - white is always likely to win that. But I don't think that test is representative of easily picking out the station signage from all the other text around a station.
In what way does road signage have different requirements? If anything its more difficult as they have to be read at speed when people are trying to concentrate on driving.
If by 'local' you mean variations on the standard theme adapted to local networks, such as the 1950s BR totems in regional colours, I don't disagree. But 'standard' ought to be the prevailing note, not the variations which can be bewildering and diminish the sense of being part of a nationwide network.
Can you give me an example of how the variations were bewildering enough not to stand out as station signage?
The national network stuff is something we just wont agree on - I think in branding terms it is massively overrated as important to the average traveller.
Maybe 'bewildering' is not quite the word. And maybe it is just my inner control freak manifesting itself. But having got used to station signage in uniform black-on-white Rail Alphabet, which works perfectly well and is understood (intuitively at least) by every rail passenger as signifying this is the national rail network, I am irritated by private companies muscling in with their own branding. Maybe I'm just an unreconstructed socialist corporatist!
Aesthetically I prefer the white-on-dark blue, with an elegant sans serif, of the Italian network. Or the similar styling of the recent (?) GWR branding. But the important thing to me is that there is a uniform standard. Like there is on the motorways.
Martin222002
Member
Meanwhile at EMR…
www.eastmidlandsrailway.co.uk
EMR to improve wayfinding signage at eight stations across its network | EMR
New signage aims to help customers understand best and safest route Works cost more than £70k Eight stations to be improved - including Sheffield, Kettering and Nottingham East Midlands Railway (EMR) is rolling out wayfinding improvements across eight of its stations aimed at helping its...
www.eastmidlandsrailway.co.uk
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Good god the Rail Alphabet 2 signage is awful.
So many negatives about ptivatisation however one thing that has been spot on most of the time is brand identity and how that impacts on station signage.
London Midland was probably the best example of this.
The new GBR ones getting rolled out are so bland and faceless. Need to take a leaf out of ScotRail and the late LM's book in that regard.
So many negatives about ptivatisation however one thing that has been spot on most of the time is brand identity and how that impacts on station signage.
London Midland was probably the best example of this.
The new GBR ones getting rolled out are so bland and faceless. Need to take a leaf out of ScotRail and the late LM's book in that regard.
Goldfish62
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Agreed. I think SWT/SWR and Southern are also good examples.
But as can be seen above the roll-out of "GBR" signage appears to be anything but universal.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Meanwhile at EMR…
EMR to improve wayfinding signage at eight stations across its network | EMR
New signage aims to help customers understand best and safest route Works cost more than £70k Eight stations to be improved - including Sheffield, Kettering and Nottingham East Midlands Railway (EMR) is rolling out wayfinding improvements across eight of its stations aimed at helping its...
Surprised they are allowed to go non compliant, but wow, that looks so much better than the RA2 designs.
They just need to get Best Impressions in for the whole thing.
py_megapixel
Established Member
You keep saying this, but no, they really don't.
We already have Cityzap, Witchway, Coastliner and pretty much every other Blazefield brand; Go North East and North West; Oxford Bus Company; Salisbury Reds; Cardiff Bus; Arriva Sapphire; Newbury & District; arguably Kernow and probably loads of others besides - all using what looks like the same design rejigged slightly. It's not a bad design, by any stretch - for one operator, or possibly one major group. But it's already too pervasive, and we really don't need the whole railway looking like that as well.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Depends what brief you give him. He was responsible for Stagecoach Beachball as well, I believe (but not its utterly horrid replacement), and that is quite different from the bus look you refer to.
Worked very well for London Midland.
I can think of a worse thing to have as a standard UK public transport look, to be honest. I would be happy for someone to come along and do better, but I am yet to see it. London Northwestern's look, for instance, is rank amateurish in comparison.
bramling
Veteran Member
Even Connex had quite a good way of branding itself. Just a shame the brand quickly became severely tarnished by poor service.
Old Northern also did quite well in my view, even if I did find their blue and purple a bit depressing. Merseyrail is also very strong, though they’re a special case.
At the moment I must say GWR has been done fairly well.
The problem has always been that some parts of the railway have seen so many successive changes there have been times when things have been a complete mess. Anglia is the classic example of this, where both trains and stations could have elements of multiple different identities all messily co-existing.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The whole package is great, yes. I forget who did it?
GWR branding was outsourced to Pentagram.
nlogax
Established Member
More evidence that RA2 isn't going to become the stylistic panacea that it's been trumpeted as any time soon. As it stands the railway is still too fragmented for one wayfinding system and one style guide to rule them all.Meanwhile at EMR…
EMR to improve wayfinding signage at eight stations across its network | EMR
New signage aims to help customers understand best and safest route Works cost more than £70k Eight stations to be improved - including Sheffield, Kettering and Nottingham East Midlands Railway (EMR) is rolling out wayfinding improvements across eight of its stations aimed at helping its...
Give it five years and this may all come together under whatever GBR looks like once it's properly established. Meanwhile prepare for more of the same hotchpotch signage between regions and lines.
The signs across the Abellio TOCs (West Midlands Trains, Greater Anglia, and now EMR) are the same just with different coloured stripes.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The signs don't look terrible, but the general branding package is just amateurish and was even worse at launch. The "Trebor Mints" livery is admittedly growing on me a bit, but it's still not as good as the LM package by a country mile.
py_megapixel
Established Member
Aren't WMT's signs - and indeed the rest of the branding package - specified Transport for the West Midlands anyway?
Fits in with their colour scheme but the actual design is consistent across the mentioned Abellio TOCs - I believe the same guy is behind both the TfWM and Abellio designs anyway.