Roundel
Roundel was originally the in-house design department of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). In the early 1980’s Mike Denny and John Bateson negotiated a management buy out. Roundel grew and widened their client base to become a high profile design agency. The consultancy was committed to creativity and Roundel won many awards for creative excellence.
These awards included over fifty D&AD awards and their work featured in many key publications including Manuals 2 and International Corporate Identity. Their clients were from a variety of sectors and industries but the consultancy also specialised in rail and road transport. Roundel created a joint venture to form the Transport Design Consortium.
Michael Denny
Railfreight
Established in 1982, Railfreight was the dark side of British Rail. Its trains emerged from run-down depots to do the dirty work of lumping raw materials around the country, slipping around the network as invisibly as possible. Locomotives were painted a grubby grey so as not to show dirt, which meant they never got washed.
It was as if management wanted their prime visual asset to look uncared for, in contrast to Railfreight’s competitors in the road haulage business, with their bright, shiny HGVs.
The time had come for Railfreight to emerge from its dark and dingy shell, and show its true colours.
Roundel answered the call from BR for a family of visual identities for the division and its five sub-sectors – Coal, Construction, Metals, Petroleum and Distribution – that could reverse the mindset around the depots, and stoke the dying embers of pride and professionalism.
The Roundel team developed the markings for each sector, working with a limited palette of yellow, red, blue and black. With minimum means the pattern in the central square would denote the commodity being carried: wavy liquid petrol, black coal, sheets of metal and building blocks. A quarter-frame in the upper left-hand corner made an optimistic, upwardly-pointing arrow, but also combined with each pattern to create the suggestion of an F (for ‘freight’).
The resemblance of the finished emblems to designs found in basic heraldry was not accidental. Roundel wanted them to be seen, recognised and admired from a distance in busy urban settings, like shields and banners on the battlefield. No logotype or brand name was necessary. The minimalist insignia may not have meant a lot to most members of the public – they didn’t need to.
What mattered was the way that people warmed to these bold, brutalist markings brightening the grey rail landscape as they blurred through stations or across viaducts.
The depots weren’t immune. The new, sector-based symbols and fresh, light-grey livery ensured the engines a regular trip through the washing shed. And new depot mascot plaques designed by Roundel, mounted next to the driver’s door of each loco, helped to nurture a renewed sense of ownership of each depot’s rolling stock.
Ahead of its time, Railfreight’s wordless, totemic identity was designed to last forever. But just seven years after its launch it was shunted into the sidings.
The privatisation of British Rail saw the freight business broken up and shared out to private-sector operators, each one daubing its own inferior livery over Railfreight’s sector emblems. Britain’s railways began their descent into visual dissonance.
