New Travel North East website

A new Travel North East website has been launched at travelnortheast.uk/ which is a major step forward in integration between Buses, Rail, Ferry, and Metro.

#KeepItCalvert

A great asset of the ‘branding’ of this new website is the use of the ‘Calvert’ style, named after the famous graphic designer Margaret Calvert who designed it in 1980, and is well known for her earlier work alongside Richard ‘Jock’ Kinnear for the design of road signage still in use all over the UK.

An interview with Margaret Calvert by Silvie Fisch (Director Northern Cultural Projects) and Professor Graham Smith (Newcastle University Oral History Unit) back in July 2021 is available below:

Margaret was also present for a short segment on the BBC’s TopGear back in c.2010 where she took a ride with James May in a Vauxhall, please see that segment below too!

The importance of the ‘Calvert’ branding cannot really be understated as part of the North East’s identity for the last 45 years or so, the black and yellow ‘M’ cube being as recognisable to Geordies as the Tyne Bridges or Newcastle Brown Ale.

Hopefully as we roll onto a more and more integrated system, we’ll see more of the Buses and Rail logo rolled out to stations as far apart at Berwick Upon Tweed, Haltwhistle, and down into the depths of Durham such as Darlington, maybe even more of the Ferry one too if Blyth was ever to regain a passenger ferry across the Port of Blyth, to connect to a new railway station on the Cambois side of the water perhaps?

Let’s hope that over the coming months the purple rail logo will begin to roll out at railway stations, accompanied by the red buses logo for properly integrated public transport.