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Stations rebranded to Great British Railways design / Rail Alphabet 2 & 3
- Thread starter JaJaWa
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R
RailUK Forums
I didn’t manage to take a picture as I was on a passing train but I believe that Elstree & Borehamwood has new RA3 signage on its platforms (seen from the curl on the l at the bottom).
Though still boring, it does look a lot better than the current version in the standard with thicker arrows and dividers on some of the signs.
Though still boring, it does look a lot better than the current version in the standard with thicker arrows and dividers on some of the signs.
Leyland Bus
Established Member
RA3 in a heavier weight aswell... At this point, what was the need to create a new typeface when it's more or less what Rail Alphabet was in the first place?
More photos here. Shows off the new style signage well including what seems to be a new icon set:
https://transportsigns.co.uk/project/manchester-airport-wayfinding-upgrade/
Yes this is the latest “GBR Proper” / Rail Alphabet 3 design also seen at Cambridge South.
Personally, I don’t like it. The bolder font is one thing, but the symbols, box around them, and 1980s style small thick arrows are a massive downgrade IMO.
pr1
Member
I'll admit to being baffled by RA3 essentially returning to the very arrows they said at the start of all this required replacing with the thinner alternatives!
TT-ONR-NRN
Veteran Member
I think those Warminster signs above look really nice.
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Yes the boxes are just awful.
Not convinced about all the signs, especially the ones on the side of the building that have no border and no feeling of authority. They look like the sort of sign you'd expect if someone in an office had to quickly produce something in Word and print it out and laminate - just bigger.
If you had all these plain white boards with plain black text telling you things, it begins to feel like when Roddy Piper put on a dodgy pair of specs in They Live!
Notice how the no smoking/vaping sign has a border at the very least. It's a bit worn out in comparison, but your eyes are drawn to the message and don't drift away (yes, borders do make your eyes stay within their bounds).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's basically the RA1 symbols with the RA3 font, isn't it? Looks a heck of a lot less clumsy than the RA3 symbols, though I still don't like any of it really.
The only RA2/3 implementation I have seen that I like is the white-on-black backlit implementation at New St.
py_megapixel
Established Member
Why on earth is wayfinding signage being done by outsourcing individual stations to external consultancies?
Doesn't sound like a recipe for consistency to me...
It's not even like they've done a particularly good job. I particularly like how "Male toilet" and "Accessible toilet" are formatted completely differently on the same sign.
In any case if the station is Bee Network branded surely the signs should be in TfGM house style and not Rail Alphabet 1, 2 nor 3?
Doesn't sound like a recipe for consistency to me...
It's not even like they've done a particularly good job. I particularly like how "Male toilet" and "Accessible toilet" are formatted completely differently on the same sign.
In any case if the station is Bee Network branded surely the signs should be in TfGM house style and not Rail Alphabet 1, 2 nor 3?
The Warminster signs are pretty much what GWR have been quietly rolling out for the last few years, following the (now apparently obsolete) Wayfinding standard, but they've left off the GWR stripe that they used to add to name plates. Here's a selection. GWR have actually done what they should: replaced the signs rather than using stickers and followed the standard (apart from the stripe). It was looking pretty good when it was being done (mostly) properly.
Bear in mind that down here in GWR land both Wales & West/Wessex and FGW stuck with the BR standard so (a) almost all our signs were RA1 until about 10 years ago anyway (and some still are) and (b) we've had black-on-white signs down here since BR (except for a very few blue on white), so they don't look out of place here.
As for https://transportsigns.co.uk/project/manchester-airport-wayfinding-upgrade/ I can forgive the borders round the icons if they were to allow all the icons that are of different widths to take up the same space on the sign, but that only makes sense if they are aligned to the right or left rather than bunched with the text. And shouldn't the aeroplane always be pointing in the same direction as the arrow?
pr1
Member
I know we've covered this before, it's just it seems that since the advent of RA1 and the new wayfinding guidelines, the updates have been implemented at different times. It seems that there is an inconsistency across the network, and the whole point was to remove inconsistency (the narrow arrows are at Preston, but not at Manchester Airport, eg)
It's not even clear if the direction to the accessible WC is only for men or not:
The top sign suggests that the 'Male' WC has an accessible facility, the second suggests a separate accessible WC that is not necessarily only 'male'.
On the top image, there was plenty of room to have the accessible toilet underneath, like the bottom image, removing any ambiguity.