CIE and Irish Rail logos.......

Master and commander

CIE/Irish rail have never had much luck with their logos that they put on their locomotives and coaching stock. Every incarnation has been ridiculed and had the piss taken of it as a means of denigrating the often poor service provided by the company. Some of these are as follows;

-Remember when CIE was first created and all the stock had been given a new "wings" logo which became known as "The Flying Snail". [Embedded Image Removed]

-Then in 1964 the paid big money to a sweedish company to design a new image. It was CIE sorrounded by a segmented circle. This was often riduculed as "the Broken Wheel". A version of this is still in use by the CIE company. It featured on all stock including the 141, 181, 121, and 071 class locomotives.


-In 1987 Irish Rail was created and this was given the new IR "points" logo". This was frequently defiled by graffiti louts who often sprayed on an "a" after it making it read "ira". LOL


- In 1994 then they brough in my personal favourite, the "Arrow" or "IE" logo. This is nice but it is often ridiculed by people who like to call it the "plug and socket" logo, as it looks a little like a plug going ito a socket.
It is still in use on the 201 and 071 class locos and on the almost withdrawn 141 class of which 2 or 3 are left in service
[Embedded Image Removed]

- The newer "Irish Rail" type logos have not been denegrated yet as there is not much to criticise about them as they're text based, like the intercity, commuter and dart logos. maybe they have cracked it at long last. On the other hand maybe we could call them the "three worms" or something. Anyone have any good ideas?

What do people think and of this practice of piss taking of the companies image? Is this practice specific to irish railways or does it happen elsewhere too?

-Chris-

Master and commander wrote: »

What do people think and of this practice of humiliation, piss taking and defilement specific to irish railways or does it happen elsewhere.

Could you have made your point without the hyperbole?

Cookie_Monster

I don't like the last one as it's an advertisement for the website rather than a corporate logo.

The "Flying Snail" is actually a pretty cool logo in all fairness, especially compared to the bland minimal designs that followed.

LXFlyer

The official corporate logo is still the Arrow - as evidenced on the recently published annual report.

goingnowhere

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

The "Flying Snail" is actually a pretty cool logo in all fairness, especially compared to the bland minimal designs that followed.

Flying Snail was not actually a CIE produced logo, it was the logo of the Dublin United Tramways Company (DUTC). Would have been perfect for the Dublin Transport Authority

Run_to_da_hills

My favourite was the Flying Snail, I can barely remember it as a kid during the cross over to the broken wheel. I think they should go back to it.

Do other rail companies change about with their logos as much? Renfe, SNCF, FS, NS SNCB ?

corktina

laughing at the logo isnt confined to ireland, people used to reckon the "barbed wire" BR emblem meant they didnt know which way they were going and in steam days they had to change the "cycling lion" so there was a left and right handed facing version as people were laughing at the poor lion standing in a draught with his tail in the air like that. The "Network south-east" livery was thought to be inspired by toothpaste also

I like the 1987 IR logo, it was perfect for a railway company and reflects what the company does, or what it should do. It's just unfortunate that the vandals had a go at it, but to be honest I don't think that's why it was withdrawn, it was probably more to do with it being Irish Rail rather than Iarnród Éireann.

Bashing of logos wasn't confined to CIÉ, the British Rail double arrow logo was referred to of the "arrow of indecision." (as mentioned above)

parsi

I love this attitude that only Irish entities are ever incompetent or laughed at.

What about ALITALIA - always late in the air, always late in arrival
SABENA - such a bad experience never again
S-Bahn Berlin - lord only knows what folk are calling them now.

etc etc

foggy_lad

parsi wrote: »

I love this attitude that only Irish entities are ever incompetent or laughed at.

What about ALITALIA - always late in the air, always late in arrival
SABENA - such a bad experience never again
S-Bahn Berlin - lord only knows what folk are calling them now.

etc etc

I like that new intercity logo but I hear cries already of aqua-fresh(is that the one with the three stripes red white and blue?) toothpaste being faster.

Terrontress

I don't like the newest logo. It's just too obvious. I also hate the typface used across CIE. It reminds me of comic sans from MS Word. There is no authority to it.

I think the broken wheel was the best of the lot. It's classy and timeless. A good logo is important in rail travel as you are forming an opinion of the company's reliability and safety based on it.

The IE arrow is very stylised and looks extremely dated but all in all it is a decent logo. It needs two colours printed to recognise the IE which can be a problem. Am I alone in thinking that for a printed arrow to convey motion or speed it should point to the right?

The NIR logo is also very dated and I'm not sure if it is still in official use. The Translink logo is just a rip-off of First group. They turned it upside down and added some road markings to it. I think they use a guy called Ray Stenning to design the vehicle markings.

So many London TOCs just have a printed name. Southeastern for example. Dull.

I'm not too keen on SNCF. It's like grafitti; lots of bright colours and stylised writing.

My favourite logo of a train company has to be Deutsche Bahn. It's just so uncomplicated and strong.

penexpers

It has been said that the TGV logo looks a bit like a snail.

CIE

parsi wrote: »

I love this attitude that only Irish entities are ever incompetent or laughed at.

What about ALITALIA - always late in the air, always late in arrival
SABENA - such a bad experience never again
S-Bahn Berlin - lord only knows what folk are calling them now.

etc etc

There's also Amtrak over in the States. Original logo (left) was called the "pointless arrow"; the new logo (on right, which they adopted about a decade ago) has been dubbed "three sheets to the wind".

Terrontress

Terrontress wrote: »

The NIR logo is also very dated and I'm not sure if it is still in official use.

Not officially anyway, it's only used on their GM locomotives. The current official NIR logo is a variant of the Translink one.

Terrontress

Karsini wrote: »

Not officially anyway, it's only used on their GM locomotives. The current official NIR logo is a variant of the Translink one.

Which is fairly naff. In spite of me saying that the NIR logo is dated, I think that it is a lot better than the Translink one.

Check out Translink's t compared to First's f.



From what I can see, First got their logo in 1995, Translink in 1996.

cbl593h

Terrontress wrote: »

The "effin circle" as its affectionately known in these parts..........

Niles

Is giving the logo a nickname necessarily "ridicule"? Saying something looks like a "plug and socket" isn't really ridicule as such. Besides, as pointed out foreign companies have had their logos mocked. I'm not that keen on the current "irishrail.ie" branding (though I suppose it's snappier when it comes to getting the idea of webfares out there) - having the name in Irish gives it more of a unique/cultural flare, most other European rail companies have their name in the native tongue (of course they speak it too!). I suppose really I don't care as long as the service is reliable, of reasonable frequency, etc...

icdg

Terrontress wrote: »

I don't like the newest logo. It's just too obvious. I also hate the typface used across CIE. It reminds me of comic sans from MS Word. There is no authority to it.

I hate CIE 2000 Italic. It just looks horrible. They also pushed the Dublin Bus logo over to fit in with it. Nowadays both Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann have abandoned it for different fonts and Íarnrod Éireann is the only group company using it. CIÉ itself use the non-italic version of CIE 2000 which only looks worse.

The NIR logo is also very dated and I'm not sure if it is still in official use.

Dumped along with the Citybus and Ulsterbus logos in 1995 for variants of the Translink logo. NIR stopped calling themselves NIR at that point and prefer "NI Railways" now instead.

So many London TOCs just have a printed name. Southeastern for example. Dull.

GB TOC logos have a very short life expectancy. Of the 25 original franchises only Virgin Rail (and only then on West Coast), Chiltern Railways, and South West Trains are left. Only Chiltern is still using the same logo it was using immediately post-privatisation. The problem is that TOCs are typically not around long enough to establish a brand identity, some have lasted as short a time as two years. Little wonder that the British Rail logo is still going strong, just shy of its fiftieth birthday, it (and the Transport for London logo too) is a design classic, and still the symbol most people associate with passenger railways in Great Britain. It still adorns every mainline railway station and every passenger railway ticket sold in Great Britain. I'm not a fan of the variant white on blue National Rail version with Comic Sans logotype, used in print advertising, but the original white on red BR version is still the one on signage.

My favourite logo of a train company has to be Deutsche Bahn. It's just so uncomplicated and strong.

Believe it or not the Deutsche Bahn logo was ridiculed by people in Germany when it was first introduced, mainly because it was actually too similar in peoples minds to the old Deutsche Bundesbahn logo, which of course it is (and deliberately so, its basically a simplified, modernised version of it). The Bundesbahn logo looked dated and the Deutsche Bahn version keeps the concept while making it look modern. In 1995 people just saw DB spending taxpayers money on a logo which looked not too different from the original though.

Terrontress

The TFL roundel is fantastic in certain uses. There is a great feeling of familiarity with the red and blue as you approach a tube stop. Also, I saw an immaculate Routemaster with a massive white roundel on it and it looked fantastic.

But when you see it on a congestion charge penalty notice, on the window of a hackney that has just cut you up or a cycle hire bicycle then it is not so endearing.

Rawr

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

My favourite was the Flying Snail, I can barely remember it as a kid during the cross over to the broken wheel. I think they should go back to it.

Do other rail companies change about with their logos as much? Renfe, SNCF, FS, NS SNCB ?

NSB here in Norway have revised their logo a couple of times.



But not by much, as you can see. It was sort of a flying wheel originally (top logo), and then in the 70s it was turned into the red logo you see in the middle. The red one is still in use, with the last grey logo pasted onto some express Intercity trains. But even then, the red logo seems to be preferred by them.

So not much change there, compared to IE and some others.

Terrontress

I'm just waiting for a bus at an ungodly hour and thought I'd throw in to the mix what a fantastic logo Bus Èireann have with the leaping dog. It conveys speed, direction and Irishness. The text beneath it is a fairly awful typeface though.

D.L.R.

Why CIE changed the perfectly good DART logo to that nondescript wavy design is another head scratcher. I think their design dept must be just a few lads doing some overtime, rather than actual graphic designers.

No concept of keeping and expanding on a classic design, unlike the tube, U-Bahn, etc. Sad really.

Capt'n Midnight

parsi wrote:

S-Bahn Berlin - lord only knows what folk are calling them now.

etc etc

Sometime/Never Cycle Freight