On the 8th of November 2010 we were pleasantly surprised to read on Design Week http://www.designweek.co.uk/home/blog/what-happened-to-identity?/3020293.article a letter from Patrick Argent about why are clients choosing to change their identities from identities that were loaded with meaning and personality to ones that appear anonymous and lacking in any creativity.

As examples that showed creativity, with layers of meaning and a strong idea behind them where three identities, of which two where ours, The Royal Armouries Museum and The London Transport Museum. The third identity mentioned was The National Grid by John McConnell.

This article tempted us to a bit of nostalgia (typically a bad word with us) and we took a look at our archives to remind ourselves of these two identities we had created during the 1990s.

The London Transport Museum identity was commissioned between 1992 and 1993. The art director responsible was Alex Maranzano, (retired from Minale Tattersfield in 2009) and the senior designer was Jon Unwin (today he is Graphic Design Programme Leader at Falmouth Collage - http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/component/contacts/352/view/design-graphic-design-bahons-119/jon-unwin-105/index.html).


Our solution was selecting different people from different times travelling on London Transport. From a top hatted Victorian gentleman to a modern passenger time appears to be speeding up as we reach the present day. A case of travel, traveling through time…

In our opinion the solution had an elegant idea at its core (what strategists today prefer to call a ‘big’ idea). The London travellers traveling through time was a versatile concept with a symbol that could be adapted and brought to life through a number of different applications. The visual identity could easily be applied to banners, event invitations, membership cards, posters, brochures and internal signage. The identity came in different versions depending on colour restrictions, which included a multi-colour version, a black and white version and a version that could be reversed out of a single colour. It proved to be very versatile and loaded with meaning. However, the identity was never animated, which was a pity seeing its potential.


In 2008 the London Transport Museum went through another major refurbishment and the identity was dropped in favour of the famous TfL roundel. However powerful and iconic the roundel is we feel that the museum has lost its own personality as a place of transport enlightenment and delight and now resembles more the depository of Transport for London’s decommissioned transport vehicles. The London Transport Museum website is http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/




The Royal Armouries identity was commissioned between 1995 and 1996 and was the last project Brian Tattersfield, one of our founding partners, art directed and personally worked on before retiring.

The brief was to design the visual identity and signage for the then newly built Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.




Outside the main entrance two granite columns presented the mask in 3D to greet visitors as they enter. Because of the simplicity of the building there was no conventional sign system required, instead a secondary set of symbols where created to identify the main areas of the museum, from the horrors of war to the thrill of the tournament. Visitors would then be directed to these areas by huge banners which would hang the full height of the internal street.


The identity could be easily reproduced big or small, in one or two colours which made it incredibly versatile and applicable to a range of different applications and gift shop merchandise. One particular gift item we thought particularly ‘creative’ was a mask of the actual identity itself.


At the time of presenting our design concepts to the museum’s curators we also highlighted that the name Royal Armouries Museum, could eventually be abbreviated to RAM, an appropriate anagram seeing the famous helmet used ram horns which are symbolic for confrontation and warfare.


Sadly over the last years the identity has slowly diminished to near oblivion and replaced by a somewhat anodyne and rather boring identity. The Royal Armouries Museum website is http://www.royalarmouries.org/home