At London Bridge station ministers and designers mingled with the general public beside a Hornby train set, which is the largest train anyone's physically branded yet.
Lots of people on social media had thoughts about the new branding.
I've concealed my opinion amid 20 other comments I read yesterday.
• Looks like someone knocked over a pile of paint pots in B&Q.
• It looks great - an iconic British image for our publicly-owned railways.
• This looks faffy. And very garish.
• Not as bad as I feared but still looks like it was designed only with one train shape in mind.
• Controversy as I don’t hate the new proposed GBR brand and livery.
• "Designed in-house at the DfT" yeah... you can tell.
• There a lot to like here: Loving the return of double arrow and Rail Alphabet.
• Still think there needs to be some variation by speed and regionally.
• Sweet mother, GB News are operating trains now!
• The GBR livery seems to be the same shapes as TransPennine but with some fills changed in Paint.
• It's fine.
• Minimal would have been so so much better.
• Would be nice to see local trains in local colours with GBR kept for cross country services.
• Reminds me of the Olympic teams, which seems like an acceptable level of patriotism without going down the flag shagger route.
• To be fair I feared worse.
• I’m in favour of this, although it’ll look pathetic/insane on a two-car Class 150 pootling through Nunthorpe.
• The worst aspect has got to be that long diagonal white wedge. Imagine how jarring it will appear while the train is in motion.
• Awful corporate nationalist slop.
• Why isn't the double arrow symbol aligned so its horizontal bars match the x-height of the text?
• I'm afraid this livery seems more about vanity than it does about the needs of the passenger.
• Frankly I don't care what colour the trains are or what branding GBR is going to use. More importantly, do the trains run reliably?
Don't fret, this isn't the final design, it's work in progress. As Tim Dunn messaged yesterday...
Yesterday I nipped over to @transportgovuk to have a look at some #GBR branding development work. What's missing from the narrative of it being touted as a "brand reveal" is that it's more of a "look and feel": it certainly hasn't been finessed creatively yet. Reading between the lines yesterday is that these concepts will be developed by a GBR brand and marketing team; but since the org doesn't yet exist, and the people haven't yet been appointed, this is a loose starting point for them to work from.
If you have any thoughts, here's a special comments box for men over 50. comments
Everyone else, feel free to comment below.
