Coporate Identity: Colour Standards

There was more consistency in design standards 30 years ago, where reproducing consistent results would've been a lot more difficult given the lack of automated technology there is today. You will find extensive discussion/argument about LT colour names on Wikipedia as well unfortunately... the amount of times you see the name of a colour changed on there is ridiculous...

IIRC, many of the current Corporate Identity documents were published in mid-2005. I think I might have the originals on a hard drive somewhere – I'll have to look – but I'm not sure whether names of colours were changed since then.

Relatedly, you will often find that TfL themselves do not adhere to their own colour, let alone design standards. When there was a mass haul of refurbs with regards to signage here on the Uxbridge branch of the Met (where there was absolutely no problem with the existing roundels and signage already on the stations), I made a complaint about how the colour was not compliant to the design standards and went as far as comparing the Pantone settings they'd set down as "standard" to what was put up on the stations. The feedback I got was basically that 1) it was out of TfL's hands because they had contracted somebody to do the work and 2) things vary under different light/lux conditions. My answer to that was that if they couldn't be bothered to check the quality of the work done to ensure it was consistent with the Corporate Standards, then they shouldn't have bothered having the work done at all.

Some signage also failed to fall in line with the "standards" with type set incorrectly or the incorrect type being used (especially in the way of temporary signage – it seems that because it's "temporary", it need not follow a standard, even though it is in public view), including removable/changeable vinyl signage that tends to be updated regularly or on order (ironically, I've just noticed on TfL's website that they have an Issue 1 publication on something with regards to this).