British Rail

A British Rail travel centre in 1964. Image courtesy Laurence King

Arrows of indecision. Barbed wire. Crow’s feet. In the 50 years since he drew up one of the UK’s most recognisable symbols, designer Gerry Barney has probably heard them all – but he doesn’t mind.

The story of the British Rail symbol began in 1960 when a 21-year-old Barney successfully applied for a job as a lettering artist at the prestigious Design Research Unit (DRU) in London. He sketched his idea for the British Rail brief “on the back of an envelope” while taking the Tube to work. “When I got to the office I drew it up, ” he says. “It was exactly how I drew it the first time … I just had to formalise it.”

A British Rail blue carpet, 1964. Image courtesy Laurence King

DRU produced 50 different symbols and taped them to the studio walls to share with the head of the company, the director of industrial design for the railways and the British Railway Board’s design panel … this eventually came down to two: a design of two circles and an arrow, by Collis Clements, and Barney’s symbol. “Arrows were in fashion, ” he recalls. But in an interesting twist, Clements’s design was leaked to the press and subsequently abandoned. That left only one. “It worked because it was obvious, ” says Barney. “When you think of railways, you think of parallel lines … there was a certain logic to the way it looked, then it was a question of stylisation. I’m proud it’s lasted so long. And I’ve never thought, ‘I wish I could do it again because I’d do it better.’ I actually wouldn’t know what to do.” Fifty years on, those arrows seem far from indecisive.