A Sadly Unsuccessful Redesign | Mar01 |
Dublin Bus unveiled their new website last week, and it’s the latest part of a company-wide redesign that’s truly ambitious and has created a striking, contemporary, and, let’s face it, well-designed corporate image.
Unfortunately, this major expense came at a very bad time, and, despite the association of poverty with public transport, the economic realities have forced Dublin Bus to cancel a number of services and prepare to eliminate large numbers of staff. This being a media blog, however, I’m primarily concerned with the tragic fact that such a carefully planned and executed body of work hasn’t resulted in tangible results for the company which commissioned it.
Colour
Many years ago, before the mid-1990s, Dublin buses were pretty much uniformly green. Not, mind you, a vibrant, edgy green, but what I’v come to consider 1920s nationalist green. The drab tones of army uniforms which adorned our post boxes for so long (most of which were actually Royal Mail boxes from colonial days just painted green) adhered itself to the national transport system, too. Needless to say, the single monotonous colouring was not exactly cutting edge design. And so, when the company got some new buses in, they coloured them differently- cream and blue. This choice seems to have been pretty arbitrary, and lasted roughly a decade before the real redesign got started.
The bold yellow and blue tones of our modern fleet were brought about at the same time (like their cream predecessor) that the company acquired a new vehicle model as their standard workhorse. This, I’m convinced, is when they started thinking about a major redesign of the entire corporate identity. New Ireland had arrived, where everyone had their own cars. What was going to make the bus stand out? Warning sign yellow, apparently. And the real success here was the conformity across everything from bus stops to leaflets- striking tones in high contrast and vector graphics were the order of the day.
Typography
When it came to analysing what “Dublin Bus” was saying, they played it safe and chose Helvetica. What’s inspired about that choice, apart from once again its consistency, is the excellent way in which the weights were carefully chosen to integrate the lettering with the company’s logo- a “three castle” looped design which is a simplification of the emblem of Dublin city. It’s a simple but carfeully integrated choice which recognises that the primary purpose of transport signage is to convey information in the most efficient manner possible, and that the aesthetic concerns should be subtle and in no way overrule that primary purpose. In my opinion, that’s what effective choice of type is all about.
Vehicle design
Just a quick note on this- the new fleet (which has almost entirely replaced the older vehicles on major routes) features a slightly curving front and larger glass windows , giving a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing effect. I’ve no idea what goes into the choice ofehicle, but whoever designed this automobile managed to give soft curves t a great clunking monolith. Added to the highly visual colours we’ve already talked about, and it’s a welcome addition to the streets.
Website & additional literature
The last things to be eased in, the accompanying material and literature, including the online presence, is positively anal-retentive in its adhesion to the established design principles. Sure, there’s some creative flair here and there- I remember the printed Nitelink leaflets in black and magenta (black of the night bus, see?) but the high-contrast colour schemes and effective typesetting remain.
Overall, it’s an impressive campaign, and one which I really hope pays off in the long run. My concern is that some exectives will look at money spent on advertising and design, and see a decrease in ticket sales during the same time period. We want to encourage more of this kind of thinking.
Posted by Dave Molloy in