> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Harbour Line: one identity for eleven ferries - URL: https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/harbour-line/ - Published: 2026-09-28T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-28T09:00:00.000Z - Description: A colour for every crossing, place names instead of numbers and signs readable from a moving boat in the rain. - Author: Lena Brandt - Tags: Branding, Motion, #work, #Import 2026-09-30 05:40 Harbour Line runs eleven small ferries across the river in Rotterdam. Every day about nine thousand people use them to get to work, to school and to the markets on the south bank. For forty years the service had no real identity: a different logo on every boat, timetables printed in four styles and signs that nobody could read from more than a few metres away. The city asked us for a new identity. What they actually needed was a system that tired commuters could read in two seconds, in the rain, from a moving boat. ![The north pier at 7:40am, the busiest ten minutes of the day.](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/ferry-dock-1.jpg) The north pier at 7:40am, the busiest ten minutes of the day. ## The brief The brief was short and honest. The transport department wanted the ferries to feel like one service, not eleven. They wanted people who did not speak Dutch to find the right pier without asking. And they had almost no budget, which meant the new identity had to work with the boats, signs and printers they already owned. We spent the first two weeks not designing anything. Tomás and Lena rode every line at every hour, from the first boat at 5:30 to the last one after midnight. We photographed every sign, every timetable and every sticker that a crew member had added over the years. We counted how many people looked at the signs, and how many looked at their phones instead. > The best wayfinding is the kind nobody notices, because nobody got lost. > > **Lena Brandt** ## What we found Three things surprised us. First, most people never read the timetable. They read the *clock*, then the colour of the boat. Second, the old line numbers meant nothing to anyone: regular passengers used the names of the piers, and visitors used the names of the places on the other side. Third, the most important sign on the whole network was a hand-written board at the south pier that said, simply, *next boat*. That board became our starting point. If a crew member with a marker pen could solve the main problem, the new system should be at least that clear. ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/ferry-ticket-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/ferry-sign-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/ferry-crowd-1.jpg) Old tickets, old signs and the people who actually use them. ## The system We built the identity around three simple parts. 1. **A colour for every crossing.** Four routes, four colours, chosen to stay distinct for people with the most common kinds of colour blindness. The colour appears on the hull, the pier and the ticket. 2. **Place names, not numbers.** Every sign names the destination in large type, then the time of the next boat. Line numbers survive only in small print for the staff. 3. **One typeface, two weights.** A sturdy, open sans serif that stays readable at a distance and in low light. Nothing thinner than medium weight is allowed anywhere on the network. The logo is the simplest part of the whole project: a horizontal line with a small arc above it, a boat on the water. It works as a sticker, an embroidered patch and a two-metre sign painted on the side of a hull. 🎨 The four route colours were tested at dusk, in fog and through a wet window before we signed them off. One of our first choices, a warm orange, turned almost brown in low light. It was replaced two days before the final presentation. ## Timetables that fit on a phone Most passengers check the timetable on their phones, so we designed the digital timetable first and the printed version second. Each pier has one page that answers one question: when is the next boat, and the one after that? The page loads in under a second on a slow connection, because many people check it while walking down to the pier with poor signal. The printed timetables use exactly the same layout. A passenger who has seen one can read the other without thinking. ## Rolling it out slowly With no budget for a big launch, we planned the change over eighteen months. Each boat was repainted when it went in for its regular service. Signs were replaced when the old ones wore out. For a year, old and new stood side by side, which sounds messy but turned out to be helpful: regular passengers learned the new colours before the old signs disappeared. We also wrote a small guide for the crews: fifteen pages, mostly pictures, showing how to make a temporary sign that fits the system. The hand-written *next boat* board is still there. It is just in the right typeface now. ## What changed A year after launch, the transport department ran the same survey they had run before the project. The share of passengers who said they felt confident finding the right pier went from 61% to 89%. Questions to crew members about which boat to take dropped by about half. And for the first time in years, local newspapers wrote about the ferries without complaining. The part we are proudest of is less measurable. People now talk about "the blue boat" and "the green boat" when they give directions. The identity has become part of how the city describes itself. ![The south pier after dark. The signs are lit from inside so they stay readable in the rain.](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/ferry-night-1.jpg) The south pier after dark. The signs are lit from inside so they stay readable in the rain. ## Testing with real passengers Before anything was painted, we built full-size cardboard versions of the new pier signs and put them up for a week next to the old ones. We stood nearby with clipboards and asked passengers two questions: which boat are you taking, and how did you know? The answers told us which signs worked and which were ignored. One result surprised everyone. The large clock we had added to each sign was read far more than the timetable beneath it. Passengers wanted to know *how long* they had to wait, not *what time* the boat left. We changed every sign to show minutes until the next departure, updated live, with the timetable in smaller type below. ### The crews had the best ideas The ferry crews know the passengers better than anyone. We ran three workshops with them during the project, and several of their ideas made it into the final system: a simple symbol for boats that take bicycles, a stronger colour for the last boat of the night and a sticker that warns when a pier is closed for repairs. Designing *with* the people who use a system every day is always better than designing *for* them. ## Credits Creative direction by Lena Brandt. Design by Tomás Reyes and Aiko Tanaka. Motion and launch film by Sam Okoye. Photography by the Folio team.