The British Rail
Corporate Identity Manual published in 1965 gave expression to the
idea of total design – absolutely ever part of BR was considered
with every detail intended to give a unified message about the values
of the organisation. Transport had long been a pioneer in marketing
and design – London Transport set the standard while we remain
fascinated by the railway posters of the 1920s and 1930s.
Post-war constraints
on resources and the challenges of bringing the “Big Four”
together (who hadn’t actually fully resolves the challenges of
“Grouping” two decades earlier) meant that British Railways
struggled with its identity. There was a step change when British
Railways became British Rail – and perhaps against the odds somehow
they got it right.
The monolithic BR
Blue gave way in the 1980s to sector identities and then in the
mid-1990s to the shadow companies ahead of privatisation. David
Lawrence clearly feels every step away from BR Blue is a step in the
wrong direction – is this ideological, it went hand in hand with
the move away from Nationalised industry to the Private sector, from
public service to commercial imperative. While the sectors brought
diversity to the BR identity I feel it continue to hold on to the
importance of quality design – I my room as I type the “art work”
is 3 BR livery style sheets from the era of the sectors.
With privatisation
railfreight seems to have retained good design, although with the
advantage that their focus is their locos – EWS now DB, GB
Railfreight, and DRS all have clear identities – in the passenger
sector some have been good such as GNER, SWT, and recently GWR,
others have been dreadfully but I won’t name names.
It is a fascinating
topic, but despite the rich material David Lawrence has written a
fairly boring book. I am a geek about trains, I am a geek about
design, if you write a book about train design that doesn’t excite
me you are in trouble…
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