“If you can design a pictogram that works, you don’t have to speak the language,” says Barney, crystallising the way in which the double arrows device was able to work across elements as diverse as posters, uniforms, cutlery and signage. “To be effective,” wrote Spark, “these elements need to be applied to every facet of the railway system: locomotives and passenger and freight rolling stock stations, town offices and other architecture signposting of all kinds uniforms road transport ships print, publicity, sales aids and exhibitions.” It was, even by today’s standards of cross- and multimedia applications, quite the undertaking. Writing of the project in the pages of Design in 1965, Robert Spark reflected on the four basic visual elements that DRU had created for British Rail: a symbol, a logotype, a name-style and house colours. They work together.” British Rail Inter-City poster from 1977 – © NRM Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library But that comes from lettering, where you have to pay attention to the counters the spaces that are left, not the thing you’re drawing. Where the angled bars meet the horizontal ones they will appear thicker at the join, so they actually widen slightly going out. “In the BR symbol the lines aren’t all the same thickness. “When you do a line of lettering with the characters the same height, the ‘o’s can look too small, so they’re always made a bit bigger,” he explains. On closer inspection, Barney’s symbol isn’t quite as straightforward as it first appears, much of which can be attributed to his background in hand lettering. So when Collis’s design got leaked it only left one the one I did.” “For this, curtain fabrics were produced, carpets were woven, posters were printed, and it was all put together in the form of an exhibition. “In those days you actually had things made for presentations,” says Barney. ![]() ![]() The sheer amount of collaboration involved in producing presentation materials meant that this was often a risk. Diagram, by Michael Johnson – showing the tapering of the angled bars in the BR symbolīut in an interesting twist, Clements’ design was leaked to the press and was subsequently abandoned. “Arrows were in fashion,” he says, smiling. This was then cut down to two: a design by the studio’s Collis Clements (two circles and an arrow) and Barney’s symbol. Photograph by Alistair Hall, .ukĭRU produced around 50 symbols, Barney recalls, taped them up on the studio walls and Gray along with the representative of the BRB’s Design Panel, director of industrial design for the railways George Williams, selected a shortlist of six. I just had to formalise it.” Guide to the new British Rail identity – shown in the Design Research Unit: 1942–72 Cubitt Gallery exhibition. It’s exactly how I drew it the first time, with straighter lines. “I seriously did do it on the back of an envelope,” he says. I just happened to think of this symbol.” Appropriately enough, Barney came up with his design while taking the tube to work. “The designers at DRU were given the brief and, to my knowledge, it didn’t satisfy Milner so he threw it open to the rest of the studio, six or so people. “I was a lettering artist, I wasn’t a designer,” says Barney, who went on to co-found design studio Sedley Place in 1978, where he still works. Barney not only became the first person in the studio permitted to work with the head designer’s drawings, but he was also the first to address him directly as ‘Milner’. Despite being 40 years Barney’s senior, Gray seemed to have found a kindred spirit. He got the job and quickly established a close working relationship with the studio’s co-founder, Milner Gray. The story of the British Rail symbol begins in 1960 when Barney, then aged 21, applied for a job as a lettering artist at the prestigious Design Research Unit. Invite to the New Face of British Railways exhibition (1965) – from the Cubitt Gallery show (photograph © Martin Hartley) Modern corporate identity had arrived and the British Railways Board were determined to follow its call. Canadian Railways had unveiled its bold CN device in 1960 and this dispelled any thoughts that BR’s crest could be brought up to date. ![]() Out would go its heraldic badge with its connections to the steam age – a red lion, ‘sejant erect’, grasping a train wheel – and in would come sans-serif type and a total, unifying identity system. It was set to become a modern, streamlined organisation, with the help of a radical secret weapon: a corporate identity. In the early 1960s, British Railways, the nationalised rail network created by the Attlee government in 1948, was changing. In representing two tracks and a set of points, Barney’s brief to make something ‘timeless’ looks to have done its job. It survived BR’s privatisation in 1996, the effective re-nationalisation of the railways in 2002, and remains the de facto symbol for stations across the UK, on everything from signage to tickets and websites.
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