Brands and the race to Nationalism: what’s behind it?
The recent unveiling of the Great British Railways (GBR) branding has sparked considerable debate, particularly around the reported £30,000 cost for a national infrastructure project of this scale. While the blue and white livery, reminiscent of the Union Flag, has drawn criticism, I want to explore a more profound question: What is this branding truly in service to?
The reported cost itself raised immediate flags. Having worked on significant rail brands such as Southeastern, Gatwick Express, and Heathrow Express, I know that £30,000 is not an investment that is going to enable any national infrastructure to achieve its ambitions through its brand. For a project aiming to genuinely create change, the fundamental drivers must be insight and research to uncover the ‘simple human truth’ behind the brand’s role. A mere £30,000 simply doesn’t feel like a sufficient investment to even reach that initial gate of informing a robust brand strategy.
Start with purpose, not paint
Given the scale of re-nationalisation for the railways, the objectives must stretch far beyond a simple transactional function. I’d point to three core lenses a project of this nature must consider:
- The customer and nation: How does the investment benefit the people the service is designed for? What value measures can they extract? Furthermore, how does it support the nation’s future objectives, whether through sustainability, efficiency, or simply creating a much better service?
- The national brand: How does GBR maintain and build upon the country’s great history of innovation and national infrastructure in the eyes of the rest of the world?
- Trust and emotional value: A national railway brand must reassure its customers, the commuters, that the service is one they can trust and rely on. Ultimately, the goal is to build a relationship rooted in emotional value, rather than just transactional functionality.
These are not superficial considerations. They are foundational. And they cannot be addressed meaningfully for £30,000. Research alone, understanding the human truths behind how people travel, trust, hope and feel, would exceed that. With this in mind, I don’t see how £30,000 pounds is going to enable you to even get to that first gate.
Optimistically, I’d like to believe the number is incomplete because the ambition of GBR must be bigger.
More than a flag: The spectre of Nationalism
The pull toward national symbolism is understandable. We’re in a global moment where design choices are increasingly political. Look to the United States, where the shift from Calibri (during Biden) to Times New Roman (under Trump) has become shorthand for ideological direction; professionalism over inclusivity, assertiveness over modernity.
Design details carry meaning, and these cues have been used throughout history by political movements to project power, authority or nostalgia. The new GBR identity smacks of that race to nationalism.
But trains aren’t political propaganda, they’re part of our daily lives. A national railway brand shouldn’t be about flag-waving. It should be about human-centred reassurance, trust, and the experience of a journey.
Rail passengers don’t need patriotism. They need trust.
In the railway brands I’ve worked with, from Southeastern to Heathrow and Gatwick Express, the core truth is always the same: passengers want reliability, empathy and value from a system they depend on.
A successful GBR brand must:
- Build and maintain trust.
- Offer emotional value, not just transactional functionality.
- Feel like a person talking to a person, not a faceless institution speaking at arm’s length.
- Convey care. Competence. Consistency.
These qualities aren’t achieved through palettes or paintwork alone. They come from strategy rooted in real human insight and a design system that expresses those truths with clarity and warmth.
Design is a signal. Experience is the proof.
The optimistic view? GBR could be an opportunity, perhaps the first in decades, to bring a fragmented rail system together around a purpose people can genuinely believe in. But that can only happen if the work begins with clarity: a strategy rooted in real human insight, supported by research that gets under the skin of how people feel about travelling in Britain today.
GBR needs a brand that reflects what passengers deserve rather than what politics dictates, and an ambition matched by the investment required to deliver it. That investment isn’t simply financial; it’s an investment of care, of consideration, of inquiry and, ultimately, of optimism.
The thought that matters most
The debate shouldn’t be “Why did this cost £30,000?” It should be:
“How do we build a national railway brand worthy of the journeys it represents?”
Because if Great British Railways is going to live up to its name, it must do more than resemble a flag. It must reflect a future people want to travel toward.
