New Irish Rail and DART logos

icdg

New logos for Irish Rail and the DART are apparently coming our way next week - they're on the new timetables which come into effect on Monday and are on some printed material which has gone up in stations today.

http://www.irishrail.ie/index.jsp?p=119&n=147

Basically, its yet another interpetation of the "double arrows" so beloved of many railway companies (although the British Rail version, while probably not the original, is the never beaten classic). IR's version of these is a green arrow pointing backwards back to back with a orange arrow pointing forwards. Not to subtly, its an Irish tricolour, of course.

The DART logo is the same with the the text replaced by "DART" Which brings me to the text - this one, like the original 1987 logo but unlike the 1994 version, reads "Iarnrod Éireann Irish Rail". So its okay to call the company "Irish Rail" again - something which was seemingly a sin during the late 1990s.

The irishrail.ie logo seems to be on the way out too.

EDIT: Meant to post this in Commuting and Transport

Davy

Its do many straight lines imo,

thumbs down

The cover of the DART timetable has an 8200 on it. :pac:

Stonewolf

Karsini wrote: »

The cover of the DART timetable has an 8200 on it. :pac:

Coming soon!

gobnaitolunacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWWcOSpmJdw

Captain Chaos

Looks like the Lego City logo.

lord lucan

Looks woeful imo. The original IR points logo was great,better than the subsequent plug & socket.

Bring back the flying snail.:)

Cookie_Monster

welcome to the eighties
it's hideous, and totally unnecessary to waste money re-branding yet again

Karsini wrote: »

The cover of the DART timetable has an 8200 on it. :pac:

well they have to use them for something

monument

Cropped screen grab from the timetable.

Captain Chaos

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

well they have to use them for something

They will soon enough...........................................as razor blades.

etchyed

It's vile.

Iarnród Éireann's brand image has been all over the place for years, with the orange IÉ arrow still being the official logo, but not actually ever used anywhere, the company instead favouring the budget-airline-esque URL-as-logo irishrail.ie. If reports of its demise are true, that's most definitely a good thing.

So yes, the brand was most definitely in need of streamlining. But what they've come up with is an abomination. icdg has said it already - a bad ripoff of what is already an immensely clichéd idea - the double arrow rail company logo, made even more tacky by the contrivance of shoving in an Irish tricolour. It is shameful.

Note also the elimination from timetables of the Intercity and Commuter swoosh logos, which nearly all rolling stock is branded with, and which are the entire basis for the 22000 class livery. So just as the last few of the new trains with this branding arrive, it's decided to ditch it altogether.

I'm not one of those people who has conniptions about wasted money every time a company decides to rebrand itself. But any money spent plastering this monstrosity of a logo onto trains and stations is a disgrace.

CIE

icdg wrote: »

New logos for Irish Rail and the DART are apparently coming our way next week - they're on the new timetables which come into effect on Monday and are on some printed material which has gone up in stations today.

http://www.irishrail.ie/index.jsp?p=119&n=147

Basically, its yet another interpetation of the "double arrows" so beloved of many railway companies (although the British Rail version, while probably not the original, is the never beaten classic). IR's version of these is a green arrow pointing backwards back to back with a orange arrow pointing forwards. Not to subtly, its an Irish tricolour, of course.

The DART logo is the same with the the text replaced by "DART" Which brings me to the text - this one, like the original 1987 logo but unlike the 1994 version, reads "Iarnrod Éireann Irish Rail". So its okay to call the company "Irish Rail" again - something which was seemingly a sin during the late 1990s.

The irishrail.ie logo seems to be on the way out too.

EDIT: Meant to post this in Commuting and Transport

Everything except the proverbial "meat & potatoes". When they change logos every decade or less, something is really wrong. (How long has Deutsche Bahn had their "Verkehrsrot", by comparison?)

gobnaitolunacy

lord lucan wrote: »

Looks woeful imo. The original IR points logo was great

Was this changed due to looking very like another company logo or is that just an urban legend? It had a very short lifespan.

lord lucan

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Was this changed due to looking very like another company logo or is that just an urban legend? It had a very short lifespan.

I always thought it had more to do with not fitting in with wanting to be referred to as Iarnrod Eireann and not Irish Rail. They were quite insistent on IE being used over IR and the points logo didn't fit in with that mantra. Now its swung around again as they push IrishRail.ie and move away from the IE ideal.

gobnaitolunacy

lord lucan wrote: »

I always thought it had more to do with not fitting in with wanting to be referred to as Iarnrod Eireann and not Irish Rail. They were quite insistent on IE being used over IR and the points logo didn't fit in with that mantra. Now its swung around again as they push IrishRail.ie and move away from the IE ideal.

Both names were used together with the points logo, admittedly the English getting priority, though IMO the Irish language version was rather cumbersome for the non-Irish speaker and the unfamiliar.

Captain Chaos

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Was this changed due to looking very like another company logo or is that just an urban legend? It had a very short lifespan.

It lasted about 10 years. 1984/5 to 1994/5. Still the best logo they had apart from the flying snail.

gobnaitolunacy

Captain Chaos wrote: »

It lasted about 10 years. 1984/5 to 1994/5. Still the best logo they had apart from the flying snail.

Short I mean compared with some of the others, the Broken Wheel (now reincarnated as a swirly group logo) is heading for the half-century, the snail probably 20+ years if you count DUTC useage.

The OBB's version of the snail didn't look bad, and looked quite modern to boot.

My favourite is the 1987 IR logo. It fits perfectly for a railway company. Refer's logo is almost a carbon copy of it but I believe they weren't established until 1997. So IR wouldn't have copied them.

Judgement Day

Who designed it?

How much did the rebranding cost?

What's the point of it?

Did they bin all the old stationery etc?

Will it improve services?

will they ever reopen Parsonstown to Portumna as a railway......:D

gobnaitolunacy

Judgement Day wrote: »

Who designed it?

How much did the rebranding cost?

What's the point of it?

Did they bin all the old stationery etc?

Will it improve services?

will they ever reopen Parsonstown to Portumna as a railway......:D

An Irish Rail spokesperson has assured me that services will have an improvement of up to 20% reduction on journey time as result of the adoption of this logo.:D

icdg

CIE wrote: »

Everything except the proverbial "meat & potatoes". When they change logos every decade or less, something is really wrong. (How long has Deutsche Bahn had their "Verkehrsrot", by comparison?)

Deutsche Bahn's a bad example, its current logo was launched only a few months before the soon-to-be-dropped IE logo. Of course, its the same basic idea as their (or rather Deutsche Bundesbahn's) old logo, just modernised and simplified. They justified it at the time by the fact that they had just taken over the GDR Deutsche Reichesbahn and had to rebrand everything they inherited from them anyway.

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Was this changed due to looking very like another company logo or is that just an urban legend? It had a very short lifespan.

As noted above its similar to Refer's logo, but that was only adopted after IE had dropped it. The other urban legend was that it was defaced from "IR" to "IRA" on some station signs but I dunno how through that was either. Probably more due to their insistance on being referred to as "Iarnrod Éireann" rather than "Irish Rail" during the late 1990s.

All the CIÉ companies have double-barrelled Irish-English legal names and initially Dublin Bus and Irish Rail gave theirs co-equal status (though on the IR points logo, the "IARNROD EIREANN" was in all caps and took up two lines while "Irish Rail" was mixed case and only took up one). Bus Éireann on the other hand only ever used its Irish name. Dublin Bus started minimising the use of the its Irish name from the mid-1990s onwards (though it still appears on the road-facing sides of buses) while Irish Rail went in the opposite direction. Until they launched the website and realised that "iarnrodeireann.ie" is a mouthful to pronounced and even longer to type without mispelling, particularly if you don't know Irish. Hence the re-introduction of the English title which now seems to be returning to the logo after an 19 year absence.

sharpish

http://www.logotypes101.com/logos/491/6D01F5ABFBA2AA26795F74CFACABF686/Rexel238.png

sharpish

bikeman1

The new logi is truly sh1te. I could have got some primary school kids to do a far better job. I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the new timetable at the station this morning.

What a complete waste of money too.

LivelineDipso

LOL! looks live an Irish flag with a couple of triangles chopped out of the white bit.

Will we be paying for Barry Kenny's botox next?

steamengine

monument wrote: »

It's no worse or better than any other arrow type rail logo. I reckon for some here it will be an acquired taste rather like Guinness. Remember how the very first pint tasted like s****e, but with diligent practice now tastes like nectar!

juan.kerr

Is just so the Marketing department can justify their existence and use their budget?

Every few years the Marketing department of my company 'refreshes' the logo. Which then involves replacing all printed materials, website, office signs etc. Pointless exercise since we are business to business service provider.

murphaph

icdg wrote: »

Deutsche Bahn's a bad example, its current logo was launched only a few months before the soon-to-be-dropped IE logo. Of course, its the same basic idea as their (or rather Deutsche Bundesbahn's) old logo, just modernised and simplified. They justified it at the time by the fact that they had just taken over the GDR Deutsche Reichesbahn and had to rebrand everything they inherited from them anyway.

...and the current logo and font (DBAG has not just created a logo, they created an entire set of fonts which are used throughout the business, everywhere. They install the fonts on all their computers and internal letters and everything use the font, which is copyright protected of course) is the property of Deutsche Bahn AG, which was created when the Bundesbahn was officially privatised (although there is still currently just one shareholder, the German government).

The new company acquired assets from the Bundesbahn and Reichsbahn, which required large scale rebranding, as you correctly point out, anyway. If DBAG keeps their current coporate identity for as long as their predecessors, that'll be many decades loyal service for the investment.

IE have absolutely no reason to rebrand however. It's a pointless waste of money for a state funded body to be doing this. They should be competing on levels of service, not on media spin. Not one cent should be spent on new logos for a company with such deep structural problems. It is high time IE was broken up and the service provision contracted out to minimum standards, retaining only the infrastructure in state hands.

IE are by a mile the worst CIE group company. BAC being probably the best, given how much is out of their control (road network completely out of their control and run by idiots mostly).

LivelineDipso

steamengine wrote: »

It's no worse or better than any other arrow type rail logo. I reckon for some here it will be an acquired taste rather like Guinness. Remember how the very first pint tasted like s****e, but with diligent practice now tastes like nectar!

I always have and always will hate stout.

LivelineDipso

murphaph wrote: »

IE are by a mile the worst CIE group company. BAC being probably the best, given how much is out of their control (road network completely out of their control and run by idiots mostly).

Never looked at it this way before.

Mind you if CIE (Dublin Bus and BE) owned the roads they would be closing most of them.

Stonewolf

Call me crazy but I quite like the outgoing official logo (The plug and socket IE one).