(10 May 2017, 12:59 pm)Venturego wrote Timetable also includes service no. M6 along with M7 & M8 under this brand.

I think it looks amateurish (as do many GNE brands) IMO should have extended Venture, with maybe a sub/tag line for these services: "Venture into the Metro Centre" and include "intu Metro Centre" brand within this cant strip if intu are paying advertising monies/promotional spend.

How it looks is always going to be down to personal preference, and we'll never have an instance whereby every single person on this forum agrees whether it's cosmetically pleasing or not, but I disagree entirely with your opinion that the "Venture" brand name should have been retained.

The "Venture" brand in its present guise was set up to promote 'venturing' further afield, a pun based on the connections the "Venture" network of services make available at Stanley and Consett. Since then, the services within the brand have been changed such that they are no longer the services which allow people to connect onto other services which venture afield, rather they are the services which go further afield (i.e. to the Metrocentre).

The changes to the minibus network at Stanley isn't really a bad thing at all (compare the new M6/M7/M8 to the old X43 - they've come on leaps and bounds!); and I think it makes perfect sense to remove the V7/V8 services away from the "Venture" brand, prefix them with the 'M' letter to connote 'Metrocentre', and have a brand which focuses on the main selling point of the route. As I said before, this allows Go North East to sell some pretty clear messages to the people of Stanley and Consett, and it's really easy to promote which bus goes where, under the new branding scheme.

I highly doubt bus operators are paid to have Metrocentre on the side of the bus - this is something the bus operators want to do, as it'll be the main selling point of the route in many cases (i.e. Stagecoach's 100, Go North East's X66, etc).