The votes have been counted and Omnibuses can unveil the livery judged by its readers to be the best. And it is… Bluestar (though that shown below is unrepresentative of the livery it submitted).
If you need reminding, we took the five bus liveries selected by routeONE in its recent livery competition and asked Omnibuses readers to choose their favourite. See the five liveries, here.
The rankings were:
Like routeONE, we allocated three points for your first choice, two for second and three for third. Once we’d added all the scores together, Bluestar came out the clear winner, with nearly 45 per cent of the vote, and frankly there was little doubt of that, right from the outset. This compares to routeONE’s winner East Yorkshire Petuaria Express, with only a third of the vote total.
We’re not surprised Bluestar came out first. We invited participants to give a reason why they chose their top ranked. A significant proportion felt that Bluestar’s efforts represented a fleet rather than branded livery. Others felt that it was clean, modern, fresh, that it stood out, and was appealing. A few of these descriptions also represented visitors’ views about Black Diamond. Those who favoured EYMS looked upon the route specific livery as noble, offering old-fashioned values and the like. A handful felt EYMS won by default.
Are Omnibuses visitors different to those who read routeONE? We now that there are a significant proportion of professionals calling daily at Omnibuses but we also know that there are enthusiasts, too. Enthusiasts are less likely to read routeONE but are probably more likely to be passionate out a vehicle’s chosen livery. That does not say professionals are not. Mind you, there were those who felt that Bluestar was too fussy or that after a while you didn’t actually notice it. Most, though, felt that the livery stood Bluestar apart from its neighbour.
Over a quarter of those who voted felt that they could not bring themselves to rank any of the five in third place. And this draws out the fundamental problem as regards the routeONE livery competition. Operators submit their liveries and, from this year, a panel of five narrowed the list down. The five panellists were selected from a ballot. So, winning depends upon ensuring you enter and a subjective process, something routeONE will admit. Better perhaps to convene a panel including retired industry grandees (e.g. UK Bus Awards), industrial and graphic designers to make that difficult judgement call.
Or why not just ask Omnibuses’ readers?
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Liveries: your verdict
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14 comments:
Perhaps, but who are liveries designed for? Surely they are really there to advertise the product, and to stimulate custom? Therefore shouldn't it be the customer, or arguably the non customer, who judges?
One topic of lunch time discussion amongst our County Hall "buses" team was "how can operators really believe that a dealer stock white vehicle with merely the fleet name on be considered a livery?" Yet operators must think they are liveries as they entered themselves in the routeONE competition!
Personally nothing really stood out in the competition this year, but the entry is self-selecting. I can think of a very effective re-branding happening in our county (buses, coaches and school buses each with separate styles) yet the operator didn't enter. And if 1 didn't enter himself there must be many more out there for whom such competitions are an irrelevance.
like the last comment i did not vote as i did not like any of them.liveries should be eye catching and functional at the same time.as for competition relevence maybe not but public approval is .
There is little point doing this about liveries, not the way it has been done anyway.
I am 17. To me, the Bluestar livery is easily the best. The EYMS livery is awful: Dated, cluttered, just generally not reflecting a modern product.
There's too many luddite enthusiasts, who will always default to what they grew up with, and won't accept it any other way. The recent Lothian change shows this, everyone got excited that "finally the madder that has been with us for xx years is back blah blah". They forget the new livery isn't actually that good and sits rather uncomfortably on most of the vehicles it's applied to. And do every day passengers really care whether their bus is mainly white or mainly madder? Only a few oldies I bet.
Therefore I think that liveries should be left to the designers who know what they're doing. There's no point getting a bunch of enthusiasts to do it.
As Anon@0935 says, getting actual passengers to judge would be more productive.
What are liveries designed to do? Attract customers. Who are the main customers? Over 60s with free bus passes (you don't need a livery to attract them) and younger people, who actually pay their fare. So should the industry go the modern way, with swoops and curves, or try desperately and cling on to the old liveries like that or EYMS?
I would suggest that the purpose of a livery is to enable the bus to be identified - as belonging to, or being operated by, a particular operator. The marketing/selling functions follow logically from that basic purpose. In other words, people on the street should be able to immediately recognise the bus as being, for example, a Bluestar vehicle rather than one from First or Stagecoach, or any other operator in that area. Special liveries for particular routes can also work in the same way, though obviously it does require the operator to be consistent in the use of such route-branded vehicles.
Clearly, the most important part of the bus in this respect is the front, and yet this is where the majority of modern liveries fail. The fronts of many modern buses seem to consist of glass or black surrounds, particularly above the level of the average 4x4 SUV; the LED destination displays are not clear, so that most single deckers look like lorries from a distance, and double deckers are little better.
I'm sure that operators could try to make more imaginative use of the fronts of their vehicles, notwithstanding the relatively large glazed areas that clearly do need to be kept clear - but they don't seem to. Basically black liveries, are of course, particularly poor in this respect!
The point about fronts is very valid... but it's not helped by certain manufacturers leaving no space for branding and fleetnames (e.g. Wrights who use teh space for their own logo). I wonder if any operators have made respresentations about this?
To anon at 09:50
You won't believe it right now but trust me, in 20/30 yaears time you too will be nostalgic and harking back to the times when you were growing up. We all do it, it's natural. That's why many preservationists buy buses they went to school on and few get passionate about those that went before. Sorry, going off-topic!
In the early days of London tendering I found several convenient links that I hadn't appreciated existed simply because the buses on those routes were suddently in operators' liveries and branded e.g. Kentish Bus on the 19. When they everything was all red I hadn't noticed them and stuck to the routes I was familiar with.
Anonymous (10:53) wondered:
...certain manufacturers leaving no space for branding and fleetnames. I wonder if any operators have made representations about this?
Cardiff (I think it was) requested that Scania not add their name to the front of a batch of single-decks - I think that Ray Stenning also had a hand in this.
Does make you wonder what the point is - do potential passengers really have a preference? Surely other operators know perfectly well who makes the chassis?
I think the main point has been missed. This isn't really about the best livery; after all, the shortlisting is dependent upon the choice of judges and their own views. This is more about giving readers of the magazine the opportunity to see their own vehicles in the magazine. Each and every one of them thinks their own livery is perfectly suitable for their own market, and I wouldn't underestimate an operator's feeling of pride when their vehicle appears in the magazine. To question the integrity of the final decision is not hugely important, although clearly fun!
Someone (Trent and Barton? Wilts and Dorset?) asked Mercedes to remove the roundel from the front of buses to enable operator information to be placed there. Am I right?
Anonymous said...
Someone (Trent and Barton? Wilts and Dorset?) asked Mercedes to remove the roundel from the front of buses to enable operator information to be placed there. Am I right?
It would appear to be Trent Barton:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hhhumber/3958009471/
The photos I found of W&D examples all had the star (or roundel - I understand Mercedes like to think of it as a star!)
So what was the result of the Omnibuses blog readers' vote on the best big group livery (or did I dream that part of the poll?)?
Anonymous said...
"I think the main point has been missed. This isn't really about the best livery;..."
There is possibly some truth in what you say, though it does seem slightly cynical. One could also say that it is really about attracting readers to RouteONE - equally cynical, however!
I think such competitions do have some potential to encourage thought about liveries - probably not among those groups with widely used corporate identities, as they (as you say) are no doubt convinced of the virtues of their own designs - but perhaps among the smaller operators who may have more scope for flexibility. This would explain why the large groups' corporate schemes do not seem to have been entered in the competition. Anything that might encourage an operator to try something a little more imaginative than a few vinyl stickers on dealer white is surely a good idea.
I don't think anybody is questioning the 'integrity' of the decision, it's just that they don't agree with it!
Anon at 10:57. I realise that one day I will be trundling around some country lanes in a Mini Pointer Dart and thinking it's really nostalgic, but that doesn't mean that at that time I should not accept any future progress in the bus industry, whatever that may be.
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