Railing against nonsense...

The recent campaign by M&C Saatchi on behalf of the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents train operators (including SOUTHERN) is designed to 'shine a spotlight' on the crucial role railway plays in British life. Tell that to your friends who suffer SOUTHERN daily! The designer of the original logo, Gerry Barney is quoted as saying “The new version of the logo really works. It reinforces the totality of Britain’s rail industry working together, and the diversity of the different companies and Network Rail. It’s a faithful adaptation of my original 1965 design”. Now I don't want to say Gerry did not say that, he would likely smack me in the gob, but I suspect that it was actually written by a talented scribe from the M&C PR team. My view is that the iconic logo has been rendered meaningless, a jumble of disparate clashing livery colours, an opportunity to create some meaning missed. They should have asked Gerry to design a new icon and left the original well enough alone. The supporting 'line' 'BRITAIN RUNS ON RAIL' is equally facile, Britain more likely runs on tea, coffee, gin and beer! For context I have added the following background to add some colour....before I go anybody remember the British Rail 'We are getting there' strap-line, oh how we laughed, or as Dave used to say, LOL!

www.britainrunsonrail.co.uk states..

‘A key feature of the campaign will be a new version of the ‘double arrow’ logo. The famous emblem, originally designed in 1965, has become an iconic part of Britain's design landscape as the identifier for the National Rail network on road signs, station buildings, tickets and Railcards. While the logo will not change in these places, it has been refreshed for the campaign to reflect the modern rail industry where rail companies are working together ever more closely.’

The Original Story

The story of the British Rail symbol began in 1960 when a 21-year-old Barney successfully applied for a job as a lettering artist at the prestigious Design Research Unit (DRU) in London, and quickly established a close working relationship with the studio’s co-founder, Milner Gray. Despite being forty years older than his new employee, Gray seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Barney – he became the first person in the studio permitted to work on the head designer’s drawings, and the first to address him directly by his first name.

“I was a lettering artist, I wasn’t a designer,” says Barney, who went on to co-found his own design studio, Sedley Place, in 1978. “The designers at DRU were given the brief and, to my knowledge, it didn’t satisfy Milner. So he threw it open to the rest of the studio, six or seven people. I just happened to think of this symbol.”

Appropriately enough, Barney first sketched the idea ‘on the back of an envelope’ while taking the Tube to work. “When I got to the office I drew it up,” he says. “It was exactly how I drew it the first time, with straighter lines. I just had to formalise it.”

On closer inspection, Barney’s symbol isn’t quite as straightforward as it first appears, and much of this can be attributed to his background in hand lettering. “When you do a line of lettering with the characters the same height, the “o”s can look too small, so they’re always made a bit bigger,” he explains. “In the BR [British Rail] symbol, the lines aren’t all the same thickness: where the angled bars meet the horizontal ones they will appear thicker at the join, so they actually widen slightly going out. But that comes from lettering, where you have to pay attention to the counters; the spaces that are left, not the thing you’re drawing. They work together.”

Following the demise of British Rail, Barney’s double arrow is now a registered trademark in the name of the Secretary of State for Transport, from whom the Association of Train Operating Companies can use the symbol under licence across the UK network. Barney remains proud of the work, if pleasantly surprised that it is still in use.

“It worked because it was obvious,” he says. “When you think of railways, you think of parallel lines – up this way, down that way. There was a certain amount of logic I could use to explain the way it looked, then it was a question of stylisation. I’m proud that it’s lasted so long, more than anything. And I’ve never thought, “I wish I could do it again because I’d do it better.” I actually wouldn’t know what to do.” Fifty years on, those arrows seem far from indecisive.