Repaints and refurbishments 2023

[ellspurs]

Mr Mayor is just waiting for the chance to reveal his bull livery, y'know as the Manchester ones have bees all over them...

[jasmine]

London Red and Manchester Yellow make sense and are characteristic and hold a history for their cities, the 17 or so different shades of grey NX are now using, just don't.

But I'm speaking from a graphic designers perspective.

from a customers perspective I really don't care when I just want to get to where I'm going. but it would obviously be nice for everything to be standardized and kept to a high standard and not have random buses missing random pieces of livery like all of the 130 Birmingham E400EVs do, the Coventry Grey and Blue stripe looks extremely good and formal and even moreso because it's a full livery with all the works, which we can't say the same over in Brum. feel free to ignore this ramble

[Tony]

London Red and Manchester Yellow make sense and are characteristic and hold a history for their cities, the 17 or so different shades of grey NX are now using, just don't.

But I'm speaking from a graphic designers perspective.

from a customers perspective I really don't care when I just want to get to where I'm going. but it would obviously be nice for everything to be standardized and kept to a high standard and not have random buses missing random pieces of livery like all of the 130 Birmingham E400EVs do, the Coventry Grey and Blue stripe looks extremely good and formal and even moreso because it's a full livery with all the works, which we can't say the same over in Brum. feel free to ignore this ramble

London Red makes sense as 'London's red buses' has been a phrase known for a very long time, but why does all over yellow make sense in Manchester, but all over grey in the West Midlands doesn't. Neither area has ever had any association with that colour previously

[ellspurs]

The grey is a nod to the brutalist 60s architecture that used to make up a lot of Birmingham's skyline.

[Steve3229vp]

The grey is a nod to the brutalist 60s architecture that used to make up a lot of Birmingham's skyline.

What sort of comment is that ?

[B7RLE]

London Red makes sense as 'London's red buses' has been a phrase known for a very long time, but why does all over yellow make sense in Manchester, but all over grey in the West Midlands doesn't. Neither area has ever had any association with that colour previously

The yellow makes sense in Manchester because bees are quite iconic there (I don't know why, but they are)

[Marge559]

The most obvious reason for yellow in Manchester is that it matches the colour already in use on the trams, tickets and general TfGM branding. The reason most people think the NX livery looks poor is that it is such a dull, uninspiring and unwelcoming grey they have chosen. Contrast to Manchester, London, Belfast, and now Bristol who all use a single colour yes, but they use a bright, more inspiring and encouraging colour.

[Tony]

The most obvious reason for yellow in Manchester is that it matches the colour already in use on the trams, tickets and general TfGM branding. The reason most people think the NX livery looks poor is that it is such a dull, uninspiring and unwelcoming grey they have chosen. Contrast to Manchester, London, Belfast, and now Bristol who all use a single colour yes, but they use a bright, more inspiring and encouraging colour.

I personally think Manchester's yellow is an awful shade that looks worn even when freshly applied. London Red looks brilliant freshly painted, but like all reds fades badly in sunlight and many London buses run around looking ropey where replacement panels or repairs are done in non-faded red.

I didn't find any Citibuses in Belfast that looked 'fresh' either. The Ulsterbus blue vehicles do though.

[Westy]

I dont remember Wmpte blue & cream having issues, it's only since the deregulation changes that Ive noticed mismatches, the fleetname stickers over the years being the obvious ones.

[Tony]

I dont remember Wmpte blue & cream having issues, it's only since the deregulation changes that Ive noticed mismatches, the fleetname stickers over the years being the obvious ones.

WMPTE had multiple shades of cream.

Standard practice in WMPTE was to repaint below the windows on any tatty buses which helped keep them looking good as that was the area in most peoples eyeline, but that meant several buses would run round with WMPTE blue below the windows and BCT stripes higher up.

The four different paintshops used (Tyburn Road, Walsall, Coventry & Carlyle Road) all painted the livery on in slightly different styles, so identical buses would be painted differently. 

[jasmine]

The most obvious reason for yellow in Manchester is that it matches the colour already in use on the trams, tickets and general TfGM branding. The reason most people think the NX livery looks poor is that it is such a dull, uninspiring and unwelcoming grey they have chosen. Contrast to Manchester, London, Belfast, and now Bristol who all use a single colour yes, but they use a bright, more inspiring and encouraging colour.

exactly this

[jasmine]

London Red makes sense as 'London's red buses' has been a phrase known for a very long time, but why does all over yellow make sense in Manchester, but all over grey in the West Midlands doesn't. Neither area has ever had any association with that colour previously

manchester's thing is bees, manchesters buses are black and yellow, what colour are bees?

[jasmine]

As Marge said, grey is just extremely flat and unwelcoming compared to other cities' colours, just off the top of my head I thought that the colour blue could be nice, our football team is literally nicknamed "The Blues". It would make sense and have a meaning linked to the city, even a brighter silver colour (like the U11DD) could be nice as a nod to our Selfridges building, maybe even a dark brown with gold highlights to pay homage to our bull? maybe a blue red and yellow livery that takes inspiration from not only UOB but the Birmingham flag, there were many other colours that could've evoked something nice about this city than several boring and muted greys.

even more ideas, why not bring back one of the older colour schemes like blue and silver/blue and cream and port it to something like the TfWM diamond pattern, I feel like that could look nice and iconic? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1242937202850140302/1305207040767037530/image.png?ex=67323048&is=6730dec8&hm=55bf51e8141548c350399b5e0f1d156560424ea343137d29d48f4a8d6c887ec9&;

[Tony]

As Marge said, grey is just extremely flat and unwelcoming compared to other cities' colours, just off the top of my head I thought that the colour blue could be nice, our football team is literally nicknamed "The Blues". It would make sense and have a meaning linked to the city, even a brighter silver colour (like the U11DD) could be nice as a nod to our Selfridges building, maybe even a dark brown with gold highlights to pay homage to our bull? maybe a blue red and yellow livery that takes inspiration from not only UOB but the Birmingham flag, there were many other colours that could've evoked something nice about this city than several boring and muted greys.

Who's football team is called 'The Blues' Now that just shows stupidity. NXWM operate in a bigger area than half of Birmingham.

[jasmine]

Who's football team is called 'The Blues' Now that just shows stupidity. NXWM operate in a bigger area than half of Birmingham.

?