It was on 22nd August that someone accused this blog of being rude about Ray Stenning. I don’t actually think I’ve been rude about anyone. In fact, it was more likely another commenter who made some sort of disparaging comment towards Stenning, whether others felt it acceptable or not.
Earlier, on 7th August, came a comment on the sister Dorset Bus Blog that “Ray Stenning is out of touch with reality…”
It seems to me, when it comes to reactions to the colourful output from Stenning’s Best Impressions design house, that reactions are actually very black & white. You love them or loathe them. There’s very little in between.
Way back to 4th June, someone said, “Does anyone seriously need to use ‘designers’? Get your own staff involved in livery design”. It seems that this topic is nothing other than emotive. At this point, I might mention Lothian Buses’ new livery as an in-house job polarises just as much as Stenning’s own.
It’s very difficult to say with certainty what passengers think. Do they appreciate a lively, considered or original design plus associated printed materials? Or do they just view a well-designed livery bus as, well, just a bus? I am not sure whether anyone has undertaken any concrete or *serious* academic research on this. If there are any younger professionals reading this, the idea of livery design and how passengers react to it might be a suitable topic for an under- or post-graduate dissertation.
If you want my gut reaction, I’d say that design is a very important part of the way in which passengers view their bus service. It portrays something. A poorly thought out design is *likely* to portray a poorer operation. It isn’t perhaps the most important element but it does help shape how passengers view their bus service’s brand and its values. The same goes for coaching, probably more so, but in a different way.
On 14th August, another commenter said of Plymouth Citycoach that here was yet another livery that looks like the rest. Was this fair comment? I think
What Citycoach’s new livery does for me is set it apart from what has become standard fare—the dealer stock white coach. Whether through convenience, laziness, easy of application of vinyls, ease of selling on or for whatever reason, DSW is now almost the universal colour of choice in the smaller independent coach sector *and* with the larger National Express, of course. Add a few lines, stripes, squiggles, stars or swooshes to DSW and, wow, the product looks good. Design a proper livery like Best Impression’s Citycoach and, man, the product looks *great*.
Friday, 26 August 2011
How Colour can be Black & White
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28 comments:
Over 25 years ago, the company I then worked for comissioned Ray Stenning to design a new livery. His offerings were too similar to his other company liveries of the time, so we went for a local designer to design the livery.
I think it's been said before that his designs are obviously from the same pen, but if he is given a free hand he can come up with some stunning schemes, and in my opinion he has developed over the years.
Perhaps, before knocking him and his work, detractors should consider some of the alternatives out there. How many memorable designs are NOT from the Best Impressions stable? Precious few!
"Add a few lines, stripes, squiggles, stars or swooshes to DSW and, wow, the product looks good."
I rather suspect that is said with tongue in cheek! To my mind it doesn't matter how many stripes, squiggles or stars you add to plain white, it still doesn't look good. Make a real hash of it, and it looks worse than plain white. But the basic problem is the white. It simply doesn't live. Compare the effect when Wallace Arnold used a plain cream livery (I believe it happened twice in their history, before and after the grey/white era). Still just a single plain colour (and a light colour, suitable for the application of logos and fleetnames), but it transforms the appearance of the vehicle. The people who decided to paint the NBC coaches white back in 1972 have a lot to answer for!
Part of the problem is that most people do not seem to realise that buses are run by different companies. The best liveries, even as part of a full marketing suite, can still be let down by a few old minibuses knocking around in white.
At the risk of arguing aginst myself, I think that the BI liveries are too generic. That might be fine within the Go Ahead group, where it could be considered a form of fleet livery, but where others use a similar livery it dilutes the brand.
I have to disagree to some extent on passenger recognition. Here, most people recognise the bus as the one or two main colours and will refer to it as that, sometimes along with the name. They wouldn't notice much else. They will however be slightly confused if a plain white bus turns up as to whether it's their bus (even if the destination and route number is still clearly shown on the front identically to the normal buses).
On the other hand they don't seem to pay much attention to the name either, most seem to call Veolia "Viola" still after four years of them being here (and now virtually gone in the area).
Metroman hits the nail on the head. BI liveries all look the same and there are operators who would not want to be associated with the big groups and their apparent "depersonalisation" of service although I accept that this is not true in all cases. A classic example of all that is wrong with BI liveries is Lucketts of Fareham - it looks like a modernised version of the NBC "venetian blind" 1980's scheme. But the current Stagecoach livery is very good; bold, vibrant and unique.
. . . and Best Impressions designed the Stagecoach livery
"How many memorable designs are NOT from the Best Impressions stable?"
Firstgroup - I suppose you could call the memorable. It still looks quite neat and fresh when applied well and looked after.
I have to agree in that a large number of BI designs look much the same, but I do like most of them.
I certainly prefer Ray's work to that of Samatha Beeley's 'Designs & Concepts', which is responsible for the likes of Network Warrington and Preston Bus (circa 2006), her work never seems to suit the lines of the vehicle.
To be fair to Best Impressions, their liveries always look good. But they do have a very distinctive style, one which I've tended to associate with Trent and Go-Ahead.
I know they did the Stagecoach livery, but as it's not route-branded it does look that bit different.
As for the Lothian livery, I quite like that (but then again I also liked the diamonds!) - the one thing I'd say is that I think using "Lothian Buses.com" cheapens it. I reckon with more and more companies just saying "search for us on Google" that sort of "URL branding" is dying out, and I think it was a bad time for Lothian to go for it.
But then, here's another one - I think "x Buses", particularly with the "Buses" part in a slanted joined font, looks very dated, as it's something I associate again with Trent of the early-mid 1990s. Better that they'd stuck with the old just "Lothian", or used something more traditional like "Lothian Transport", IMO, given that they are quite a traditional operation.
You can spot a Stenning design a mile off, they all look very good and I don't think there has been one of his designs I haven't approved of but they do look very very similar to the point that the regular Best Impressions customers could all be part of the same big bus group as the similarities could be interpreted as a corporate style by the uninitiated.
I think the problem the industry has is there just aren't enough good transport designers out there, Ray is the best in his game but his closest competition is a long way off.
In my experience you need designers who understand the transport industry like Ray does, I've tried working with creative agencies who don't have transport experience in the past and it is just painful, you have to constantly explain what is and isn't possible, something you don't have to do with Ray.
As for the Lothian design, just proves why you need bus designers, it looks awful, designed by someone with a pair of rose tinted specs on with no idea how it would work in the modern world.
What the industry needs is a bit of decent competition for Best Impressions - someone who understands transport and will challenge Ray to perhaps loose some of that repetitiveness that is coming through in his recent work.
I lioked Lothian's diamonds livery as it was refreshing and modern. The new livery looks more traditional, but why did they have to ruin it with the coloured tops and weird names? I think these cheapen the brand. The traditional livery style adopted needs a more subtle route branding, similar to Brighton and Hove's simple coloured route markings:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Brighton_to_Shoreham_along_the_coast_011.jpg
I think good bus design and an attractive colour scheme is so important, passengers might not seem to notice it or consciously care but they do because they certainly notice scruffy buses and a good clean image is important for staff morale too. A smartly kept traditional image like at Halton stands out too as something permanent whereas companies like Travel West Midlands dashed with blocks of colour and messy branding look like they've come from somewhere else where they've got the new buses and been quickly painted over and pressed into service. Good publicity is rare these days as operators leave it to local authorities to inform the public but surely they should go out of their way to sell their services. On a good note Arriva drivers even stock up their buses with timetable books at Cannock which is far more useful than the free newspapers that get thrown everywhere littering the bus.
Anon @13:12
You clearly have no idea about the lothains brands do you? Weird names are in fact "LOCAL" and "ORIGINAL" names. I Suggest you have a good read about the brands and what there actually stand for:
http://lothianbuses.com/find-your-bus/timetables/621-service-3747x47.html
http://lothianbuses.com/service-number/5.html
Colour tops also help make it easier to see what buses are travelling down in coneoy down Princes street
Ah a nice positive blog today with generally positive comments.
It's adequate, the new Lothian livery - anything would be after the tacky dregs that was harlequin (inspired by Liz Hurley's tarty dress; need I say more!) but then falls down, quite literally, by not following the lines of vehicles (why is this such a problem for designers?) and flopping over wheelarches. Never liked local branding either; it cheapens the image and reduces flexibility.
Proper madder and white would look dynamite on anything. Look at East Yorkshire or Isle of Man; simple and bold colours that flatter even the ugliest of vehicles.
Lothian - good colour scheme, bad execution (curves clash with rectangles of windows and advert frames), good colour coding, route branding - not sure, maybe too clever by half.
The message is - we are a smart company and it is no disgrace to be travelling on one of our buses.
But compared to the local competition from FES (message: we don't much care), anything would look good.
I work at Best Impressions (although will be shortly leaving), and am inclined to ask - if bus operators didn't like Ray's liveries, or thought they were just the same as other operators, or thought they didn't have any effect on passenger numbers or customer satisfaction, why would they keep coming back to him?
If buses continue to be given basic or amateur liveries, people will automatically think they offer a basic or amateur service. How's that going to get anyone out of their cars?
Even if there are similarities with some of Ray's designs, it doesn't really matter to the public because they don't see the whole picture countrywide, just their local area mostly. Chances are it won't be similar to other operators in the area, so it's easily distinguishable.
I'm an insider at the maroon and whites, and we sometimes cringe at some of the coloured tops used. But, you have to say, it is a very smart scheme and together with the new red and brown interiors, the buses are very comfortable and homely.
Ray Stenning has revolutionised the way in which bus company's see themselves. Image is not just about a livery, it has to be mixed in with good quality vehicle design and customer service. It's no goo having a pretty livery if your vehicles look like they have been parked in a farmyard and the customer comes last.
O.K., some are a bit 'samey', but at the end of the day, his publicity and livery designs are used at the majority of bus companies that are adding customers - how can you argue with that!
I'd love to know Ray's thoughts on TfL's drift back to 80s all red. I'm sure he could do something creative for a corporate London bus livery that balanced traditional red with style.
So why not ask the owner of this site to ask him?
Ray Stenning is a god. Look at the Guildford Park & Ride livery - the best ever by a country mile. Stunning.
Ray's work cannot be bettered. His design work on Roger French's book Pride & Joy is truly superb.
DSW is now almost the universal colour of choice in the smaller independent coach sector *and* with the larger National Express, of course. Add a few lines, stripes, squiggles, stars or swooshes to DSW and, wow, the product looks good.
It looks a hundred times better than the plain light blue Connex spec'ed for the Jersey fleet - the more so as they then changed the vinyls over the doors and the background was a visibly different shade of blue!
Anon@19:19
All of TfL's liveries have been designed in-house (eg Underground, Trams, etc), including the not-unpleasant ELT and Hydrogen Bus liveries. The all-red is certainly a rather crude approach to marketing the famous red London bus, but the roundel does improve it no end and it suddenly looks more like a TfL "family livery".
Regarding red London buses - my understanding is that the TfL requirement nowadays is for something like the bus to be 95% red - and that it's not TfL's rules that has led to the disappearance of the individual bus company livery elements on most London buses in favour of a plain all-red approach, rather the bus companies themselves have chosen to do this in order to save money on repainting and repair costs. However Go-Ahead London at least has chosen to retain their individual livery elements of a charcoal skirt and yellow coach lining - and this is still appearing on all their new buses.
Whether the bus companies would take kindly to a TfL-mandated livery (i.e. something more complex than mere 'all-red') is another question - as Leon Daniels of TfL has said, not all operators were that keen on the idea of reintroducing the roundel on London's buses, so whether they'd play along with the introduction of a compulsory livery as well is another question. They'd probably try and ask for more money - something that definitely isn't going to be forthcoming from TfL any time soon...
Well National Express are going to be seeing falling passengers numbers following the ending of the current Concessionary fare scheme after the 31st October
Further changes are coming for the main UK concessionary fare scheme.
Watch this space for further news
Mizter T@0903
The TfL requirement used to be red with an optional coloured skirt, but now that all operators except Go-Ahead have voluntarily gone to 100% red this is now mandatory. Go-Ahead's new deliveries are all 100% red with the roundel.
As London is not a commercial market, there is no need to worry about growing passenger numbers or doing anything that is not paid for in the contract,such as publicising and marketing the services,or suggesting improvements to add capacity etc.
Recent tender results also suggest providing a good reliable service does not matter much either,despite the obsession and scrutiny of performance via iBus that would make some provincial operators go nuts.Penalties if you fall short,peanuts if you do well.
If Joe Bloggs coaches can shave few quid off the bottom line,lovely..you win.It's a Merry go round at the fair, that is not very merry or fair...and one day that may all change.Until then...red it is,plus a roundel from the 80s.
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