Fitch and Tangerine hail London taxi system look

Fitch London is awaiting sign-off this week on environmental and signage concepts for Transport for London that will hail a new era in how taxi services are branded in the capital.

The work encompasses two aspects – creating a defined on-street presence for taxis, including improved waiting areas for passengers, and applying unified branding across black cab, private hire and minicab services, which are being visually linked together for the first time.

Fitch London is applying branding to environmental designs for a ‘ten-bay’, Tangerine-designed taxi shelter (pictured), likely to be piloted near Marble Arch.

According to Fitch London client director Stephen Green, the group has also designed a ‘taxi rank post’, in effect a ‘pole with a flag’, as well as more advanced ‘flags’ incorporating interactive help-points and ‘minimalist’ shelters that scale up in size.

Taxi regulator the Public Carriage Office is understood to have earmarked several sites for a phased roll-out. There are around 500 taxi ranks in London.

Fitch London director Graham Rodda is heading up the branding aspects of the project. The work falls under TfL’s drive to present all London’s transport ‘nodes’ within the same roundel-style ‘brand family’ – a project set in train by the consultancy last year (DW 4 July 2002).

Meanwhile, the consultancy has also been appointed to rebrand the Tote, sometimes known as ‘the Government’s bookmaker’, as a sports and leisure brand.

According to a Fitch London spokeswoman, the project will include naming, brand architecture and ‘the customer brand experience’. Current channels of distribution for the brand include race courses, shops, telephone and on-line.