Eurostar: Sculpted brand thinking…
Eurostar is a physical product, a service and an organsation — but it is also a deeply loved promise of an easier, simpler, more effortless way to travel between the UK & Europe.
We saw a huge amount of excitement that comes with traveling on Eurostar in research (and just watching on Twitter.)
Twitter is often alight with praise and the thrill of arriving in London from Paris in such an effortless way.
There’s no nasty 2hr check-in, no over the top security, just sensible, slick, well run systems that get you on your way swiftly and efficiently. It was this feeling of effortless travel, of the fact that
Eurostar opens the way to new experiences that we wanted to get across in the branding — it felt right to do something progressive, something beautiful, something sculptural.
What inspired the sculpture’s look?
Trains speed through the tunnel leaving a wash of air in their wake. We wanted to capture this speed as it darted through a loop that represents the tunnel… but the experience of
Eurostar is multifaceted, so we wanted the sculpture to appear radically different depending on the material it was made of and the angle you viewed it.
We looked at the work of Zaha Hadid — the way she uses highly progressive systems to create effortless lines in her architecture… and the Artistic movement of the Futurists who captured the idea of motion, speed and dynamism so elegantly.
We made a physical sculpture that acted as a basis for the aesthetic of the brand as well as an ever changing and adaptive logo.
We will also use it physically in Eurostar locations across Europe.
How did we actually make it?
Core structures were crafted in CAD programme Maya to achieve the perfect form then went to high resolution texture mapping and finally photoshop to achieve the quality of image files we needed to be future-proof.
We didn’t stop at computer modeling. We wanted to do this in real life so people could see this symbol of change for themselves in real life.
We worked with rapid prototyping which enables computer graphic files to be printed in three dimensions. Large scale moulds were cut using robot arm milling machines that were then crafted by hand to create casts for the fibreglass shells that contain a steel skeleton that holds the sculpture together. They get heavy.
The 3 meter version takes four strong people to lift it! When we presented it to the board of Eurostar it got a spontaneous round of applause! You wouldn’t get that from just a logo!
What do Eurostar think of it?
‘SomeOne have not just re-branded our organisation, they have created a work of art that we are simply delighted to call our own’
Sarah Sempala-Ntege, Head of Brand & Design at Eurostar