Where: Burgess Hill to Hassocks
With who: Zoë Austin
Date: 8/8/21
Who is Zoë: Zoë is a graphic designer and illustrator who graduated from the BA Hons Illustration course at the University of Brighton the year after I graduated from BA Hons Graphic Design. Over the following decade she has worked as a graphic designer across a range of sectors, including Education, fintech, charity, agency work, and more. She has also freelanced for a wide range of clients. Since graduating she has held roles in both London and Brighton, and has lived in both London and Brighton, meaning she has done the commute in both directions for a number of years. Her current role is in Haywards Heath, and she now lives in Brighton, making this one of her easier commutes, and allowing her to get to know one of the locations along the route.
Why did you invite Zoë: As a graphic designer, I was interested in considering the role that design plays along the entire route, and wanted to invite someone who had also worked as a graphic designer in corporate settings for many years. Both Zoë and I are well aware of the demands of corporate/public service design, and the compromises that often end up being made. We’re also interested in the design vernacular of smaller communities and organisations, like those that will be encountered along this section of the route. It is unlikely we will encounter any ‘award-winning’ design as we travel, but what we will see is still worthy of discussion and consideration.
Ideas explored en route
As I wait for Zoë to arrive at Burgess Hill station, I note, as I have done at many other points along the route, the prominent Samaritans advertising — both posters in advertising slots, and the smaller signs that sit at the far ends of platforms (as well as on railway bridges and as level crossings) offering a more direct call to action, if people are feeling desperate. Samaritans have been working with the UK’s railway network for possibly my entire life — I first remember seeing these signs on train stations and bridges as a child, and asking my mother what they were about. I now volunteer for the Samaritans as a call-handler, in part because of their connection with the railways, and the sad deaths that so often still occur across our network…
I think the Samaritans visual language and messaging is really interesting. Their current campaign is ‘Small Talk Saves Lives’, encouraging people to make conversation with anyone they see who doesn’t look alright. The majority of their poster slots are still taken up with their older ‘handwritten’ style campaign. As they are a charity and presumably the ad space is given to them for free or at a reduced rate as part of their partnership with Network Rail, there is perhaps less impetus and budget to swap out the campaigns more regularly. Ultimately, their message remains the same — we’re here if you need someone to talk to, or if you’re feeling suicidal — the challenge for their design team is coming up with creative new ways to say that.
When Zoë and her partner Dan arrived, we talked a little about Southern’s branding. Southern are one of the two main railways to run on this route, with their yellow and green colour scheme. We talked a little about the ‘vibe’ of this brand — we all agreed it’s distinctive, if a little old fashioned. Dan suggested is maybe harks back to an older era of design, the classic promotional railway posters of the early 20th century. Given that commuters in the south of England are (were?) a captive market, the main audience to whom trains might additionally be promoted is probably leisure travellers, so using this kind of lightly retro styling could be an intentional choice for that reason.
We also talked about the Southern logo and recurring station name motif (as photographed at Selhurst, South Croydon and other locations on my earlier walks) — the long rectangle with rounded ends, with another shorter rounded rectangle sitting behind it, emerging above and below the main section. The choice to commission these large scale murals in several locations is obviously part of this branding strategy.
As well as their own branding, Southern also oversee the Gatwick Express brand. This brand is very different to Southern’s, and was recently (?) refreshed to reflect their brand new rolling stock. The Gatwick Express is, in normal times, the fastest way to get to Gatwick from central London, and runs a non-stopping service from Victoria. Like the Heathrow Express (though not quite as extortionate), the ticket prices are marked up accordingly, to make the most of the captive tourist market (who might not realise that regular trains also go to Gatwick and only take a few more minutes). This branding is bold and red — making this trains, and crucially, their in-station branding at Victoria — easy to find, in contrast to the more subtle brands of Southern and South Eastern trains that also run from that station.
Thameslink trains also run on this route (However, unlike the route I am focussing on, they travel from Brighton into Blackfriars and/or London Bridge, and pass through the capital, emerging at Kings Cross to proceed on up to Bedford and Cambridge). Again, they have recently received brand new rolling stock, and have rebranded accordingly. The company used to be known as ‘Thameslink’, then for a few years was ‘First Capital Connect’, and has recently reverted to Thameslink. A lot of people I knew never even stopped calling it Thameslink, so clearly they decided to work with the positive brand recognition they had, but refresh the brand to feel modern and contemporary. The trains are a simple white/light grey livery, with their minimal logo emblazoned on the side. Their new trains have been much maligned for their minimal interiors and uncomfortable, hard, ironing-board like seats, it almost feels like the branding fits the trains perhaps a little too well.
Zoë told me that in one of her old jobs, she met the former head of design at Thameslink, who was interviewing for a role with her company. It seems that Thameslink had laid off all or most of their designers, and decided to use agencies to do the work. Of course I can know nothing of the detailed operational requirements, nor indeed whether they have retained some in-house capacity, but it got me thinking again about the huge amounts of designed materials that railway companies must produce every day, from timetables, to informational posters, to promotional posters, and so much more. I have often wanted to work in a role like this, and my feeling is that a strong in-house team is an infinitely better solution than an agency whose attentions and loyalties will inevitably be divided.
Both Zoë and Dan were new to Burgess Hill and the surrounding area. We followed a quiet footpath through the heart of the town and out, and they commented on how peaceful it was. Post-pandemic, both of them had been thinking it might be nice to relocate somewhere more like this, somewhere quieter. The place they both loved the idea of was Balcombe, with its quaint village life and beautiful houses and scenery, however Balcombe is already priced beyond most people’s dreams for precisely those reasons. It was, however, important to both of them to remain on the mainline rail route, both for social and professional reasons.
Dan commented that he felt everything may become ‘decentralised’ — meaning that there won’t, in fact, be a return to city office life in the way that there was pre pandemic, and that remote, distributed working will remain/become the norm. However, he did wonder whether this was wishful thinking, and that in fact we will drift back to the old ways. ‘A lot of Tories probably own all those big office buildings, and they’re going to have to figure out what to do next. Will they be converted into housing? Turned into something else? Or will there be increasing political pressure to refill them just like old times. Any change that comes of this will be determined by who’s in charge, and right now, it’s the same people in charge who were before.’
But regardless of what is to come in the future, both Zoë and Dan have been able to stop commuting over the past 18 months, and are valuing the time that this has claimed back in their lives. Zoë can’t drive, and Dan hasn’t driven in over a decade, so they are still reliant on trains and other public transport for their leisure, social and any remaining essential transport needs, but travelling by train now is more of a choice and less of an obligation than it once was. Despite their long and tiring commuting experience, both Zoë and Dan still love travelling by train, and seem to value the chance to make journeys in that way for leisure.
We talked more about living in the ‘in-between’ places along the route. Zoë said ‘Is it bad that I want to live in a retirement village now?!’ — she says that the pandemic has totally changed her mindset and priorities, and what she wants now are higher quality spaces (outdoor and indoor) of her own — she no longer prioritises the hustle and bustle of city life as she once did. Perhaps it would always have been that way at some point, but it has accelerated these hopes and dreams, for her and maybe a lot of others around our age. One of our favourite hobbies being ‘looking on rightmove at houses we can’t afford’.
We looked at a number of examples of what I would term ‘local’ or ‘small town’ design. I have long been intrigued by this almost ‘outsider’ design practice, which disobeys most of the formal rules of design, is often aesthetically displeasing to look at, but which nonetheless conveys a message, makes a point. Ever since there have been computers in almost every home, this design has existed, and it is not going anywhere. It both validates my existence as a designer (‘People can’t just do this work well, it takes years of training and practice and study and understanding’) and invalidates it (‘Regardless of my existence, people will produce this work anyway’).
(Honorary additional mention on this walk for Hassocks Pet Centre, a small, friendly local pet shop which Zoë suggested we divert to at the end of the walk, which contained MORE CATS THAN I HAVE EVER SEEN IN ONE PLACE BEFORE)
em—dash 