GWR - style over substance or something more?

Image from Hitachi Trains Europe via Wikipedia

It's easy to be cynical when a company like First Great Western, the railway franchise serving the South West, undergoes a rebranding exercise, suggesting it's like sugar coating something inedible. But I am holding back a little before taking this view - because it can make a significant difference.

Of course there is no doubt that part of it is superficial, though even that superficial part can be important. How something looks can have a big impact on our attitude to it. It's not for nothing that supermarkets tend to put their budget own brand food in pretty awfully designed and coloured packaging. They want us to feel that we are slumming it. When I get on a train, I want to have more Orient Express than Heathrow Express about the experience, and the livery is a starting point for how that experience feels.

At the moment, First Great Western trains are painted a fairly sickening purple and magenta, colours that surely could only have appealed to a colour-blind designer. To make matters worse, as someone pointed out on Facebook recently, the trains have a series of parallel lines down the side which start to wave around and jump all over towards the end - surely a graphic representation of a train that starts off heading along steadily and firmly on the permanent way, but that ends up derailed and skewing all over the place. And that name 'First Great Western' seems unpleasantly, plastically corporate.

In its place we have the positive double whammy of the name Great Western Railway, redolent of the period when railway travel really could be exciting (and something of a religion in Swindon, where I live)
, and a subtle and impressive dark green paint job, not unlike the colours of the old GWR engines (and, frankly, a lot more attractive than the old chocolate and cream that GWR used on rolling stock, though I'm sure many enthusiasts would disagree). Even the logo, with its angular lettering, has a feeling of a past age brought into the present. And the look of the onboard signs, one of the first things to have changed on the actual trains (I'm yet to see one in the new livery) is hugely improved on the old graphic design.

A good move, then on the look. But the real opportunity of a rebranding is also to do something about the feel. The danger is in skimping at this point. If a company really wants to make a difference with such a process, they need to pour money into staff training, improving customer service, and to make some noticeable changes to the comfort and journey experience of passengers. A major rebranding exercise is always expensive. So the best thing is to bite the bullet and make sure it's not just skin deep.

So that's why I'm giving the new GWR the benefit of the doubt. I really want them to succeed with this. And the acid test will be if they are prepared to put their money where their paintbrush is and transform the customer experience.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

Search This Blog