GPO Christmas Arrangements

I-Spy

I-Spy The Sky is one my favortie books, not for the content but for the cover, the illustration has so much atmosphere. And the Motorway one I think is just cool, lots of intersting little facts in there.

Pan Am Luggage Labels

With Pan Am starting tonight on BBC Two I thought it would be quite fitting to post some Pan Am luggage labels. 

The simple unfussy design works well and printed with a metallic ink, they do have a nice look and feel (although maybe not quite as simple as the Lufthansa label). The typeface used seems to be Helvetica but it's been condensed and doesn't look so good which is a shame.

National Network Platform Signage

The signage would be constructed out of curved pieces of lightly smoked glass concealing a thin digital display. The primary colours used for displaying information would be yellow and white but in special cases alternative colours could be used. For example in the event of a fire, all the signage could quickly and automatically display routes to the nearest exit or turn into no entry signs.

The digital platform surface signage is used to help the passenger wait at the correct part of the platform. Imbedded in to the floor, the glass surface will have a transparent film preventing it from being slippery when wet and protecting it from scratches.

This will help to set the passengers’ mind at ease while waiting for the train, knowing that they are on the right platform and at the correct point. The display can also be used to alert people that the train is approaching, and to stand back. Or that the train at this platform is not for public use. If it were an international train the information may need to be displayed in various languages.

National Network Ticket Design

The design of my paper ticket completely would require all the ticket printing infrastructure to be replaced. It works on a similar basis as the Deutsche Bahn machines, it can print long or short tickets. A roll of ticket stock, pre-printed with yellow, grey, holographic strip and magnetic strip would be loaded into the machine. The logotype would be printed with all the other information on demand. The short part of the ticket does the same job as our tickets at the moment and is the passenger’s right to travel. If the passenger requires an itinerary there is the option of producing a longer print which has all the relevant information. Depending on whether or not the passenger has book in advance it will show their coach letter and seat number. As the machine prints the tickets, it will make perforations in between and then finish by making a one full cut. Having the ticket attached to the itinerary stops anything from getting muddled up or lost but allows for the information to separated if required. 

British Rail Corporate Identity Manuals

I recently visited the National Railway Museum in York where I was able to go through the Volumes 2–4 of the British Rail corporate identity manuals. Unfortunately Volume 1 was missing at the time of my visit, it would have been nice to see what was in that one.

Really interesting to go through them all and see how they went about controlling the identity. The uniforms in Volume 4 are some of favourite pages. And the signage is interesting too.

It's shame that there isn't this amount of control applied to our railway network today. No one seems to care that the passenger is confronted with various identities and signage systems in just a single journey.

More images can be found here on Flickr: Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4

The copyright of the the British Rail Corporate Identity Manuals belong to BRB (Residuary) Ltd

Panels for Ravensbourne Degree Show

Getting ready for the postgraduate degree show at Ravensbourne. These are the designs for the panels.

Designing a new railway ticket

An interesting post by Daniel Gray on this blog about the insane amount of tickets it took for him and another person to take a return train journey from York with one change. 25 in total! This prompted Neil Martin to create a design where all the information is included in just one ticket. One stipulation he set himself, was that the new design must continue to use the same size ticket and pre-printed orange bars. Then Robert Hempsall, deiced to design a different version, this time he went for the two tickets rather than one. Also he includes the platform numbers with the changes.

I really wanted to attempt this challenge. Like Robert Hempsall, I opted for two tickets, rather than just one. My first design put most of the secondary information on the right, separated with a line. The main section on the left, from left to right, departure time, platform number, coach letter, seat number.

I then decided to add the arrivals time but reversed the numbers out of a black block.

Next I decided to think about what could be achieved if the orange bars were made thinner. This then lead to being able to add the the name of the station of where the train service was going. I think it is quite an important piece of information and when you look at the National Rail Enquires website they provided this. When you are at the station, looking at the departures board it helps if you know the service's destination. Like Robert, I have moved the secondary information to the bottom.

This version has no pre printing and only works with black.

My final version, uses even thinner bars and loses the British Rail double arrow to make room for the information.

My design relies on a lot of abbreviations, and an informed passenger to understand it. It could be argued that it makes the ticket difficult to use, the information could been written out in full, but this would have required the type size to be reduced. I think that regular passengers would soon get used to the design and for people who only use the train occasionally, there could be leaflets at stations explaining how the ticket works.

On a side note, I am unsure if the printers currently used by ticket offices, ticket machines and on board staff have a high enough resolution to print the smaller type size. New printers may be required, which would of course incur huge costs.

Symbol with name

Currently this is what the symbol looks like with the typography.

Typography arrangement

To ensure that the typography always sits correctly with the symbol I made this guide.

Livery and colours

I roughly applied the identity to a liver to see how the colours would work.

Quick signage mock-up

This mock up was to quickly see how the the symbol would look on signage.

T-shirt

I was interested to see how the symbol would look in small on a t-shirt, so cut it out of vinyl and applied to a t-shirt.

Testing line weight

I initially I designed the logo so the gaps were twice the width of the line. Someone said it all looked a bit thin and possible not that visible from a distance, compared to something like the British Rail symbol. In ordered work out how much thicker the lines should be I printed it out in 7 different sizes in 10 different weights. Having the logo at various sizes helped show what it would look like at small scale. I was surprised to to find out that as it gets smaller it looks better in a heavier weight, I thought it would be necessary to make it thinner. It was important to print it out rather than just judging it on screen because it looks completely different when you see it for real I couldn't decide between adding 10% or 15% to the thickness of the line. 15% I felt was a little too thick and 10% still too thin so I opted for 12%. In the bottom image you can see what a big difference it makes compared to 0%.

Deutsche Post

On my recent trip to Germany I was impressed with Deutsche Post’s identity. The bright yellow and black stands out really well, you can easily see it from a distance, which is handy for post boxes. The horn symbol is also very recognisable. I'm trying to workout if the logo/symbol I have designed is strong enough to be identified from a distance, on things like signage, uniforms, liveries etc. From looking at the Deutsche Post symbol, the line is quite thick and chunky, I don’t know how well the mark I have designed compares to this.

NN Design Idea 5

Just had this a quick idea. Not sure what I think about it at the moment. Looks quite smart but not sure if I like it as much as the NN mark I designed before and it does look a bit like the old British Gas symbol.

x-heights

I wanted to compare the x-height of the selection I made against some other well established typefaces that are used for signage. I thought that Transport (use for road signage in the UK) and Rail Alphabet would be a good standard to compare against. You can see that Rail Alphabet has by far the biggest x-height. This quote by James Cousins from the book British Rail Design in 1986 explains why.

"Kinneir's tests, performed at the Road Research Laboratory, determined that letters with an x-height of 55 mm could be read at more than 40 meters."

Aktiv Grotesk Medium comes in second with a fractionally larger x-height than Helvetica. Univers has the smallest out of all the of the comparison.

Typeface selection

In picking a typeface for this project I have considered a few options, some of which are quite obvious. First, Helvetica, this typeface comes with a lot of history and opinions. I think most designers agree it is good but it is over used. When you look at some of the successful identities for large transport companies that use it, like SBB, Lufthansa or American Airlines, these identities were created at a time when Helvetica was relatively new, fresh and different. British Rail used an adapted version of Helvetica, this was design by Jock Kinneir Margaret Calvert. The main alteration they made was to give a bigger x-height, which helped legibility for signage. Everyone is uses Helvetica at the moment, this doesn't stop it from being a good typeface though. But a typeface used as the core of an identity for something like a nationwide railway organisation needs to have something different about it to differentiate it from all the other typography that it may come into contact with.

Another option was to use Univers. Close to Helvetica and regard by some to be better. It's sharpness and coolness demands respect. I think that this maybe its downfall, it lacks the friendly qualities that Helvetica has.

Akzidenz-Grotesk is a very old typeface compared to most San-Serifs out there, Helvetica was based on it. I use it a lot in my designs as do a lot of other people, although not to the same extent as Helvetica. I want to try and find a typeface that is a little unique, if there was the budget, it would be ideal to have something made bespoke. I did consider trying to create something myself but I think it would have been a mistake to go down this route. I don't have anywhere near the skill/knowledge or the time to make a typeface good enough.

A new typeface that is currently relatively unknown has been designed by Dalton Magg, it's called Aktiv. It's described as a cross between Helvetica and Univers, based on the strong qualities of Univers but with the warmness of Helvetica. It also has a reasonably large x-height so will be good for signage. Apparently, you shouldn't use a Grotesk typeface (which Aktiv is, as is Akzidenz-Grotesk, Helvetica and Univers) because the letters share a lot of the same shapes, this doesn't help legibility. Although this is technically a problem a lot of signage systems still use Grotesk typefaces so it can't been that bad.

Lufthansa Cabin Label

The typography for this luggage label is so powerful, I don't think I have ever seen Helvetica looking so good! What's also nice about it, is that they didn't feel the need to fill up the whole space with loads of information, or a photo, or a pattern, it's really clean and simple.

NN Design Idea 4

This most recent design started out as an outlined version of the idea before. I wanted to try and create one continuos flowing line. With the first version, the curved ends were too big and the lines were far too thin. With this design the thickness of line was really important, as if it was too thin it could easy disappear if its application was too small. Alternatively if the lines were too thick the design would look too heavy. There was also the option to have the diagonal lines extend further than the verticals. In not having them extended it helped the lines to flow from one end to the other but it didn't look quite as good. The diagonal lines breaking out of the more obvious cut off point somehow make the design more dynamic and slightly more abstract.