One name for three boats and two piers

Narrow Bay Ferry Company started in 1978 with one boat and a hand-painted sign on the pier. By 2025 it ran three boats, bought one at a time from other operators, and each had kept the name and colours it arrived with. Passengers asked the ticket office which ferry was theirs, and the answer was usually “the blue one”.

The owners came to us wanting a new logo. The brief we wrote together was different: make it obvious, from the car park, which boat leaves next and where to stand for it.

Riding every crossing

Tomas and Marta spent the first two weeks on the boats. They rode each route at the morning peak, at midday with tourists and on the last crossing of the evening, and photographed every point where a passenger had to decide something: which queue, which ramp, which deck, which exit.

That survey found 74 decision points and 31 different sign styles. Some had been put up by the line, some by the harbour authority, and a few by passengers who had given up waiting for someone else to do it.

One company, three numbers

The naming question was the hardest part of the project. Each boat had regular passengers who liked its name. But three names meant three colour schemes on the timetable, and the timetable was where most of the confusion started.

We recommended one name, Narrow Bay, and boats known by large numbers: 1, 2 and 3. The old names stayed on a small plate by each gangway, which settled most objections from the crew.

The test for the hull numbers was simple: can you read them from the opposite pier, 400 metres away, in fog?

Signs that survive salt

Marine signs fail in two ways: they fade, and their fixings rust. We specified every sign in marine-grade aluminium with stainless fixings, and chose colours from the most fade-resistant pigments our fabricator offered, which ruled out two of the oranges we liked best.

The pictograms were drawn for the boat first and the pier second. A passenger reading a sign on a moving deck has about two seconds, so each pictogram uses one figure, one object and no more than one arrow.

What changed

The ticket office reports that “which boat is mine” is no longer the most common question; it is now “where do I buy a ticket”, which tells us where the next sign should go. The second phase, starting in 2027, covers the ticket office and the website.