Jubilee Line Seat Fabric Colours, Patterns

Apologies in advance for coming late to this party!

Goodness yes, I'm sure the many issues behind moquette patterns and colours have been covered (no pun intended) before but I agree at present there seems to be a lack of a 'single mind' behind the too-ing and fro-ing regarding priority seating and signing it. I wonder if there's now 'more than one master' but it doesn't help having so many variations on a theme in terms of having a consistent approach for passengers – live experimentation is no bad thing if that is what it is and not just a scattergun approach to ‘trying things’. Apologies in advance for the length of this posting but …

Anyhow, the last posting regarding the fact that the Central doesn't have a Barman colour variation; one of the reasons behind the commission for the Barman moquette was simply a requirement to have a single moquette that could be used on multiple stocks as, at the time, the policy was to downplay line colour. The reasons for this included a) the breakdown in LU's ability to choose seat fabric during PPP (which gave us the grim off the shelf fabric on the Picc and the rather weak design on the S-stock) and the impact on corporate identity b) the cost of sourcing multiple 'unique' fabrics tied to a line or stock and c) the issues about RVAR/DDA compliance in that with each stock we had to do all the designs and calculations again and that is not simple. So, Barman was intended for cross-line and stock use including refurbishments and, indeed, new stock. The first real target was the Piccadilly as that TLL fabric was not only 'non - corporate' but also due to the design and manufacturing liable to show wear pattern very quickly (its more 'plush' than we'd have ordered) and it was also because of its backing and thread count (i.e. cheaper) more liable to 'collapse' on the seat design due to lack of tension; in other words it sags and tears easier. For various reasons at the time Barman went on the Central and as usual, as is par for the course in LU, the discussions about 'single design' were raised again. From memory the subject of the W&C came up and it then got a 'line colour' interior. The real test was the Northern line refurbishments and it got the 'pure' LU corporate interior as we'd been requested to design and deliver - shades of blue and greys, all very RVAR compliant including the moquette as the colourways within the fabric and the majority field colour should, ideally, assist in contrast against the background and the components such as the armrests (and we struggled on the Northern with that).

Interestingly, we did the calculations for black handrails on the 1995-stock and they would have worked remarkably well as you can't really get more of a colour contrast against a light background than with black. This is also why yellow handrails can often 'fail' against light backgrounds and colours such as on the S-stock where there is empirical evidence that all the yellow can 'merge' so potentially causing issues with the very visibility the design should be giving. So, the '95 came out and about and we started to look at the '96-stock. The initial plan was to simply deliver the '95 interior - compliant to standards and with cost savings. But, the Board asked us to look at using the grey line colour and so, obeying orders, this was delivered with some difficulty as the ‘line colour’ doesn’t give an acceptable colour contrast on, for example, handrails and so a different shade to the line colour had to be used, specified and sourced. The Bakerloo then followed and we were asked, given the age of the stock, to deliver a ‘heritage’ feel and so the colours chosen for the interior became quite straightforward. That said, recolouring the Barman design is not simple or easy as the original design by Wallace & Sewall was predicated by a very tight schedule of colours we included in the specification and for good reasons. The patterns, colourways, repeat and internal contrast of the design have to ‘fit together’ or you end up with issues around durability, dominant field colours and pattern dazzle that have to be considered. So ‘just changing the colours’ doesn’t always actually work – it needs to be carefully looked at around shades, percentages and similar factors. This is where some of the issues around the priority seating designs came in.

Years ago we looked at so many designs to delineate priority seating including reversing the colourways or using different colourways but at the time one of the requirements we were asked to work to was not to ‘stigmatise’ the potential user such as in making a design too ‘shouty’ as well as if the very method you use to identify the seat (the moquette) is the one thing you can’t see if someone is sat on it. So, the eventual policy was to use the same common signs as used on the car interiors replicated in a consistent way on the fabric. This in itself produced a ‘problem’ in that to get the sign correctly positioned within the moquette repeat and always in the middle of the seat back requires a different production batch with more ‘waste’ at trimming. Anyhow, the issue regarding identification never went away and so the company seems to be having another go although I wonder (and I’m no longer part of it!) if corporate memory has already started to slip in terms of the very things that were discussed and rejected some years ago. That said, things and priorities change and so long as the solutions are consistent and add up to what the hopefully correct specification says – good luck! At the moment there does seem to be a move towards a radically different visual appearance to the seat and for the message to be aimed at the person who may not require the seat rather than the one who does. In some ways having a design that is significantly in terms of colourways rather than one that is so subtle that it just looks as if it has faded (think Overground) is better, the trick is that the design and colourway still has to work in terms of the overall car interior ‘look’ and meet any colour contrast rules. I can't help but think that there is a danger of over complicating what should be a simple issue here - more variations doesn't, in my designers mind, make for a solution.