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New Logo for Northern Trains LTD

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I'll admit I was amused to see their reference to using an "industry-standard typeface called Rail Alphabet" on signage. Clearly the author hasn't seen a lot of the station signage produced by Northern in either Serco-Abellio or Arriva days, which used a mix of Brunel/NR Brunel, VAG Rounded, and Arial (as seen at Oxford Road)!

True. There are now quite a few stations where adjacent station name signs on the same platform manage to be in widely varying fonts and widely varying sizes.
 
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Martin222002

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Intriguingly, a Freedom of Information request to Northern has appeared on WhatDoTheyKnow regarding this very subject…



I wouldn't necessarily hold hope for a useful answer, however, they have previously stated:
Interestingly the first Freedom of Information request you linked to got a response from Northern dated yesterday. It makes 'interesting' reading....

"Northern" said:
We write in connection with your request for information which was received by Northern Trains on 22nd June 2020. Under Section 1 (1)(a) of the FOI act we can confirm that we hold some of this information which we have provided below in red:

“When you took over from Arriva Rail North you updated your logo simply by removing the "By Arriva" part but you kept everything else the same. Now i see you have just decided to change your logo again but it seems that all you did was change the letters from lowers case letters to upper case letters but otherwise the logo is still very similar. So i just have a couple of questions in regards to these two changes. My questions are as follows below:

• 1. How much did it cost (this should be the total cost for everything involved in updating your logo including changing signage and anything else) for your first logo change (where you simply removed the "By Arriva" part)? – We do not hold this information as the cost incurred to remove “by Arriva” from our logos was borne by Arriva Group.
• 2. Was any design company involved in your first logo change (where you simply removed the "By Arriva" part)? - No
• 3. If yes to Q2 then what is the name of the design company involved? – N/A
• 4. If yes to Q2 then how much did the design company charge for this? N/A
• 5. How much did it cost (this should be the total cost for everything involved in updating your logo including changing signage and anything else) for your second logo change (where you changed all of the letters from lower case letters to upper case letters)? - The costs to refresh our logo internally have been negligible to date. We intend to undertake a gradual implementation process to ensure that we control costs, whilst still raising awareness of the refresh to our customers, stakeholders and employees.
• 6. Was any design company involved in your second logo change (where you changed all of the letters from lower case letters to upper case letters)? – Yes
• 7. If yes to Q6 then what is the name of the design company involved? – Brand Cooke
• 8. If yes to Q6 then how much did the design company charge for this?” - The design costs for the logo refresh to mark the change of ownership of Northern form part of the wider planning and preparation costs of the transfer undertaken by the Department of Transport's Operator of Last Resort. The total fee paid to Brand Cooke as part of this wider work was £26,375.

We hope this information is of use to you.

Yours faithfully

Freedom of Information, Northern Trains Ltd
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/671923/response/1594662/attach/2/....

Yes you read that right. £26,375 to change the case of the Northern logo!
 

43096

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I can assure you that the internal logo was not designed at 'great expense by some consultants'. Anyone with any graphic design knowledge can tell you the job looks extremely 'desktop-published' and was probably done on Microsoft word or by the Operator of Last Resort's graphics team in-house.

Completely agree that having two logos is just a bit of a mess, especially for an organisation that should, at the moment, be trying to project an image of dependability and competence.
You can assure me, can you?

The Freedom of Information request above says you are wrong. £26k for it. Just utterly embarrassing.
 

Alex C.

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I'm not certain it's that straightforward, it looks like they retained a graphic design agency to assist with the transfer process and the total cost of that contract was £26k. It could have been just the logo but it could have also included updated text on their uniforms, website, correspondence templates, email templates etc (and even where there aren't any big changes, I suspect there is a huge amount that needs to be reviewed to check it's got the correct legal text and references the correct company). I still suspect it was overpriced but I'd be surprised if it was as simple as £26k to turn a lowercase logo into an uppercase one.

Brand Cooke have form though as they were responsible for the LNER rebrand as well, and I imagine they received a much heftier payment for that.
 

dorsetdesiro

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It might be better for the DfT to start a completly new brand for Northern, starting afresh, then clearly specify this to be made permanent & transferable thus avoiding this mess they're in?
 

DB

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It might be better for the DfT to start a completly new brand for Northern, starting afresh, then clearly specify this to be made permanent & transferable thus avoiding this mess they're in?

That was suppose to be the case already!

At least in this case it's just the logos they need to change, rather than the whole colour scheme.
 

py_megapixel

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It might be better for the DfT to start a completly new brand for Northern, starting afresh, then clearly specify this to be made permanent & transferable thus avoiding this mess they're in?
We had a speculative thread about that fairly recently which I participated in; unfortunately I can't find it as it was quite an interesting discussion.
 
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You can assure me, can you?

The Freedom of Information request above says you are wrong. £26k for it. Just utterly embarrassing.

Wait until the papers get wind of it and who signed the hefty cheque for it with a straight face.

Where would the harm have been in running a competition for a winning design to budding students at a graphic design college or similar with a cash prize even if that was 5k you'd end up with a far better effort.
 

tpjm

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I think the point that people are missing is that the £26k was not simply for a logo. For all we know this could be a holding logo with a complete brand refresh having been commissioned at the same time that is pending sign-off. The challenge with asking a 'budding student' to design a logo is that the logo only forms a tiny proportion of the brand image. The reality is that you'd still need a creative agency to develop the brand and ensure you set the right tone and image. Prior to my railway career I was in design and let me tell you that branding is not as easy as people outside the industry think it is.
 

43096

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Prior to my railway career I was in design and let me tell you that branding is not as easy as people outside the industry think it is.
The branding people would say that, wouldn’t they?

I’m still not seeing why a re-brand is needed. The whole point of non-operator specific brands was to allow them to transfer between franchise operators. Yet here we have the DfT’s own operator throwing the DfT’s own policy out of the window.
 

py_megapixel

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The branding people would say that, wouldn’t they?

I’m still not seeing why a re-brand is needed. The whole point of non-operator specific brands was to allow them to transfer between franchise operators. Yet here we have the DfT’s own operator throwing the DfT’s own policy out of the window.
If there really is a full rebrand in the works then the motivation is clear - Northern has such a poor reputation at this point that the public needs to be advised that the company running services is a different organisation if there is to be any hope of improving their confidence in the service.

But if it's really just capitalising the name then no, it really doesn't make sense.
 

neontrix

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You can assure me, can you?

The Freedom of Information request above says you are wrong. £26k for it. Just utterly embarrassing.

Shocking, and as you say, embarrassing that the OLR have paid that much for it if that’s the case.
 

py_megapixel

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Shocking, and as you say, embarrassing that the OLR have paid that much for it if that’s the case.
I would agree with you - except, taking a closer look at the FOI request, it doesn't seem that £26k was just for capitalising the name. Apparantely that's a fee for a wider work. The thing is it's not clear what else that wider work entails - if, as @tpjm says, there is a major new design to be rolled out, or if the new logo is to be applied in lots of places and the cost of that is factored in, then it might make more sense.
 
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I think the point that people are missing is that the £26k was not simply for a logo. For all we know this could be a holding logo with a complete brand refresh having been commissioned at the same time that is pending sign-off. The challenge with asking a 'budding student' to design a logo is that the logo only forms a tiny proportion of the brand image. The reality is that you'd still need a creative agency to develop the brand and ensure you set the right tone and image. Prior to my railway career I was in design and let me tell you that branding is not as easy as people outside the industry think it is.
The logo though will be central to a brand refresh and will appear on all manner of things and I can't imagine they are about to repaint /revinyl everything and replace all signs and I don't understand what else there will be to do. New posters will just need a change of logo.

Jury is out then but if that is the final product then new Northern have well and truly had their pants pulled down.
 

bengley

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It is good, but the first one gets my vote as it looks like a rail track.
As does the second one, but stylised as an N, which is more appropriate, plus the staggered text looks better
 

WatcherZero

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I think the point that people are missing is that the £26k was not simply for a logo. For all we know this could be a holding logo with a complete brand refresh having been commissioned at the same time that is pending sign-off. The challenge with asking a 'budding student' to design a logo is that the logo only forms a tiny proportion of the brand image. The reality is that you'd still need a creative agency to develop the brand and ensure you set the right tone and image. Prior to my railway career I was in design and let me tell you that branding is not as easy as people outside the industry think it is.

Doesnt sound interim.

We intend to undertake a gradual implementation process to ensure that we control costs, whilst still raising awareness of the refresh to our customers, stakeholders and employees.
 

Bletchleyite

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Quite like them both, but I prefer not having "trains" in it as that's kind-of obvious, it slightly harks back to the 1990s fad of all bus companies having the word "Buses" in cursive font going upwards at about a 45 degree angle after their brand name, which they don't really need to state as it's painted on the side of a bus and therefore pretty obvious what their line of business is.
 

tpjm

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Quite frankly, I think that £26k is an eye-watering sum for what seems to be a very minor brand refresh and I hope that there is more to come.

It may well be that some of that cost is to purchase the rights to the ‘N’ circle emblem from Arriva which could be handled by the design agency. In this instance you’d be saving a pretty penny by not replacing the logo everywhere. Changing the typeface is a necessity in order to distance from the rest of the Arriva brand.

With respect to the people on this forum, unless you have branding experience (and I mean real experience, not just designing a logo for this thread or your mate’s cafe) I don’t think it’s fair for you to suggest that it’s “easy” to design a logo for a business. All the options I’ve seen in this thread so far have lacked modernity, professional polish and shown no regard to the heritage or aspiration of the brand. There’s a reason branding people charge a lot and it’s not just for dreaming something up in Photoshop.
 

yorkie

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Quite frankly, I think that £26k is an eye-watering sum for what seems to be a very minor brand refresh and I hope that there is more to come.

It may well be that some of that cost is to purchase the rights to the ‘N’ circle emblem from Arriva which could be handled by the design agency. In this instance you’d be saving a pretty penny by not replacing the logo everywhere. Changing the typeface is a necessity in order to distance from the rest of the Arriva brand.

With respect to the people on this forum, unless you have branding experience (and I mean real experience, not just designing a logo for this thread or your mate’s cafe) I don’t think it’s fair for you to suggest that it’s “easy” to design a logo for a business. All the options I’ve seen in this thread so far have lacked modernity, professional polish and shown no regard to the heritage or aspiration of the brand. There’s a reason branding people charge a lot and it’s not just for dreaming something up in Photoshop.

I wouldn't say it is "easy" at all, but I did successfully design a logo that was used by a business for a year or two. The successor logo was designed by a forum member who charges much more reasonable rates than this company, and with far better results, in my opinion.

It's subjective, but I do agree many of those posted here don't look professional enough, except for @JordyWM 's efforts, which I think are vastly better than Northern's logo.

I'd also argue that all the negative attributes you mention apply to Northern's actual logo (both old and new).
 

py_megapixel

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Quite frankly, I think that £26k is an eye-watering sum for what seems to be a very minor brand refresh and I hope that there is more to come.

It may well be that some of that cost is to purchase the rights to the ‘N’ circle emblem from Arriva which could be handled by the design agency. In this instance you’d be saving a pretty penny by not replacing the logo everywhere. Changing the typeface is a necessity in order to distance from the rest of the Arriva brand.

With respect to the people on this forum, unless you have branding experience (and I mean real experience, not just designing a logo for this thread or your mate’s cafe) I don’t think it’s fair for you to suggest that it’s “easy” to design a logo for a business. All the options I’ve seen in this thread so far have lacked modernity, professional polish and shown no regard to the heritage or aspiration of the brand. There’s a reason branding people charge a lot and it’s not just for dreaming something up in Photoshop.
If the DfT are paying to buy the branding then that's pure incompetence. The aim was for the brand to be owned by the DfT and transferred between TOCs so Arriva should never have owned it!

I agree with you that there is probably more to come in terms of the brand refresh. I also agree with you that changing the typeface is needed. But if some of the better designs on this forum lack "professional polish" can you explain how professional polish involves failing to match the height of the logo and the name, leaving a huge space between the logo and name and having the glaring inconsistency of lower case in the logo and upper case in the name?

Regarding the heritage of the Northern brand: what heritage? Northern is famous for several failed timetable changes, a year or more of strikes on Saturdays, getting rid of the Pacers months later than planned, retaining 1980s rolling stock in service with a mild interior refresh and having filthy trains and stations.

I think you are missing the point of the designs on this forum. Nobody is claiming it is easy to design a good coherent brand. They are claiming (and I agree with them) that Northern's new design looks cheap, rushed and unprofessional, and that what they've done can be replicated or improved upon without a lot of effort.
 
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WatcherZero

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I believe the arrangement was that the brand IP would be owned by the franchisee (as they spent their own money creating and building the brand) but they were contracted to grant indefinite usage rights at a reasonable cost (or free) to the next franchisee to avoid them being liable during the transition and if a logo somewhere was missed for 10 years.
 

py_megapixel

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I believe the arrangement was that the brand IP would be owned by the franchisee (as they spent their own money creating and building the brand) but they were contracted to grant indefinite usage rights at a reasonable cost (or free) to the next franchisee to avoid them being liable during the transition and if a logo somewhere was missed for 10 years.
Oh right, thanks for clarifying.
 

WatcherZero

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Of course one of the main things that would be affected by continuing to use a brand owned by someone else even if its fine on trains/uniforms would be merchandising, if you didn't change the brand and wanted to do some secondary revenue activities e.g. key chains and other tat, then you would likely have to pay a licensing fee for that.
 
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