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).

gobnaitolunacy

I had heard something about it being a new Infrastruture division logo, but having it on public timetables and posters that wouldn't make sense. having said that the new blue/white signage being introduced sporadically in a number of locations doesn't make sense either, not matching anything in the corporate colours.

The '3 pin plug' is quite good but as pointed out, 'IE' doesn't fit with the company now being referred to as Irish Rail/IR.

Conway635

I think the points logo, while brilliant, was probably discontinued because it made it look as if there was corporate approval of having branch lines . .

:-)

C635

Stonewolf

I heard the points logo was dropped because people were spraypainting an A after it.

icdg

New logo is on the website banner now.

I'd hope the first rolling stock they'll tackle with it is the DART rolling stock - it only just struck me that the majority of DART rolling stock is still carrying the "DART25" logo when it is nearly the thirtieth anniversary!

bk

Christ the anti-aliasing on the logo and text on the website is dreadful. I dread to think what it must look like on one of those new retina screened macs.

Pity because otherwise the IR website is excellent.

If I was them, I'd demphasize the Irish name IE even more, leave it out of the logo all together, like DB have done. With their website, iphone apps, etc. all called by the english name IR now, they really need to emphasize this as the brand name.

Solair

Not very reproducible either as it's in colour.

Odd choice of logo.

They've been trying to drive traffic to www.irishrail.ie I suppose, hence the re-focus on "Irish Rail".

Iarnrod Eireann is hard to spell and quite a mouthful to pronounce too.

Most railway logos I've seen in recent years are pretty bland though. It's just one of many European rail rebrands that looks a bit ... meh.

carlmango11

Bit ridiculous that the DART seems to just be the same thing only with the word DART. Surely it would be useful to have a recognisable logo for the DART to print on maps, other modes of transport etc. (although that sort of integration is a bit much for our planners).

I actually think the DB logo would be good as an all-Dublin brand. Different colours for different modes. DB could be it's normal yellow on a black circle. Luas could be pink on purple or something. Dart could be light green on dark green.

The problem there would be that the logo still spells 'db' so it may not be suitable as a standard logo for all services.

IsaacWunder

I think the new logo is awful. It sort of looks like a 'N' formed between the two arrows, but overall the two arrow motif and orange colour reminds me of the Navigon (sat nav company) logo



I'm no sentimentalist, but any of the old logos are preferable.

dermo88

If I was to pick any logo, and never change it, I'd choose the 1987 IR Rails Logo. The picture speaks a thousand words, you know EXACTLY what it is the moment you see it. Simple, smart, attractive. It probably took them seconds to think of it back in 1984-1986 when Jim Mitchell filed the Transport Act setting up the 3 subsidiaries. Dublin Bus still has the Castle logo.

The Plug and socket logo, could be anything. Electricity, Telecoms.....its just....one of those Gaeilgoiri things, as in lets use Gaeilge because its not Bearla, and those Sassanach ba$tards won't be able to pronounce it. Not that I mind Irish, but you get the general idea on the nationalism and linguistics thing. Its often pointless, which is certainly the case with the 1994 logo introduced on the 201 Class and 2600 Class Arrow sets, and 'cutting your nose to spite your face'.

As for the new 3rd logo. Each time this is done, it confuses the brand identity. Change liveries by all means. But try and come up with a standardised simple typeface, a logo that will last, and keep it. Its not rocket science.

Solair

I'm confused, why is it now called N?

At first glance I thought Northern Irish Railways had been re branded by Sinn Fein or something.

That logo says nothing to me and it's certainly not memorable.

How about just a simple IE and actually call themselves. IE in branding too, rather than the long winded Iaranrod Eireann / Irish Rail

Irish Rail was a rip off of British Rail & they even just ripped off the intercity branding too from BR.

That being said most railways have fairly mediocre branding.

Kintarō Hattori

Is there anywhere that has a collection of past logos I can look at?

Original "flying snail" logo:


1964 "broken wheel" logo:


1987 logo:


1994 logo with CIÉ 2000 font:


Current "broken wheel" logo:


New 2013 Irish Rail logo:

Davy

Karsini wrote: »

1994 logo with CIÉ 2000 font:

This is much better than the new one

icdg

Solair wrote: »

How about just a simple IE and actually call themselves. IE in branding too, rather than the long winded Iaranrod Eireann / Irish Rail

Irish Rail was a rip off of British Rail & they even just ripped off the intercity branding too from BR.

Now in fairness, loads of railways around Europe use InterCity is a brand, though ironically enough, Great Britain doesn't any more (despite attempts by at least one TOC to hold onto the brand after privatisation). And while "British Rail" was just a trading name for the organisation more properly known as the British Railways Board, "Irish Rail" is actually part of Iarnrod Éireann's legal name.

The problem with Iarnrod Éireann is the website, English speakers are notoriously bad at pronouncing and spelling it, which wasn't a problem until they started to try and promote the website hard, hence the re-introduction of Irish Rail. Another (lesser) problem is that while the name "Bus" is the same in both English and Irish, "Iarnrod" and "Rail" don't even resemble each other.

gobnaitolunacy

Davy wrote: »

This is much better than the new one

Any one of them is better than the new one!
Sucktacular piece of graphic design.

Poxyshamrock

I can't help but see an N aswell.

Really cheap looking.

Just think of the uniform costs alone! :eek:

steamengine

icdg wrote: »

Now in fairness, loads of railways around Europe use InterCity is a brand, though ironically enough, Great Britain doesn't any more (despite attempts by at least one TOC to hold onto the brand after privatisation). And while "British Rail" was just a trading name for the organisation more properly known as the British Railways Board, "Irish Rail" is actually part of Iarnrod Éireann's legal name.

The problem with Iarnrod Éireann is the website, English speakers are notoriously bad at pronouncing and spelling it, which wasn't a problem until they started to try and promote the website hard, hence the re-introduction of Irish Rail. Another (lesser) problem is that while the name "Bus" is the same in both English and Irish, "Iarnrod" and "Rail" don't even resemble each other.

Why not 'Raille Eireann' instead of all this 'iron road' mallarkey ?

Solair

At least it didn't get lost in that era of giving everything totally meaningless names like when they tried to rename the Royal Mail, Consignia !!!

Or, something totally unoriginal like Translink which is also used by several other transportation orgnaisations : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translink

The SNCB / NMBS in Belgium also can't decide what it's called half the time and resorted to just using a large B in a circle as their logo!

It gets mind-boggling confusing as they've also had different versions of the same website on www.sncb.be, www.nmbs.be, www.b-rail.be and www.belgianrail.be !!!!

They make IE seem absolutely web savvy and blazingly efficient !

How about simply:
IE Train / Traein

---

IE Intercity
IE DART
IE Commuter
IE

---

service name.

IE = Iarnrod Eireann & also the domain root for Ireland .ie and international symbol for Ireland / Irlande on lots of things.

Stylise the IE into some kind of logo ... maybe a more modern version of the plug/socket thing and drop the use of Iarnrod Unpronounceable.

steamengine wrote: »

Why not 'Raille Eireann' instead of all this 'iron road' mallarkey ?

It looks to me like whoever was coming up with the dictionary tranlation for Rail in Irish was inspired by French - "chemin de fer" (paths of iron).
Shouldn't it be Iarnbother Eireann anyway?

Captain Chaos

steamengine wrote: »

Why not 'Raille Eireann' instead of all this 'iron road' mallarkey ?

You can just imagine people putting the Irish Rally spin on it. Blasting through the countryside going around corners sideways. Can just picture a jack knifed 22k coming around a bend.