(15 Jan 2020, 11:00 pm)streetdeckfan wrote I'm not defending them, but at the end of the day does it really matter?

There's only so many ways that you can split up colours on the side of a bus. 
Swoops were all the rage, now it's straight lines.
At that point, do you go horizontal, vertical or diagonal, forwards or backwards, at the front or the back?
What do you use to break up the colours? Do you use one solid line, or do you break it up with smaller dashes of colour, sort of 'feathering' the colours?
Do you use contrasting colours, or similar shades?

Just because they're using the same template, doesn't mean it's a 5 minute job.

No it doesn’t really matter. Passengers don’t care and 99% of people wouldn’t know the livery is pretty much a copy from elsewhere.
i just find it quite funny on twitter seeing several different bus companies praising them for their newly designed liveries.
My thoughts usually include: ‘When it comes to designing a new livery do BI simply click the fill tool and change the colours on one of their few templates and say Ta-Da!’, or ‘why do these bus companies pay BI to design that - surely after looking at a few examples of their work you could’ve easily done it yourself’, and finally, ‘when the bus companies are shown their new livery do they never say “well that just looks like X, Y & Z’s livery, we wanted our own identity”’.

I also don’t get why the route name/brand often doesn't stand out against its background. Eg the ‘Green’ in Green Arrow doesn’t contrast with its background very well.
It was the same with the X in Xlines at first on the  Solo minibuses. It had to be altered.
And didn’t the first Cobalt & Coast branded bus have to have its ‘Cobalt’ lettering changed?

I know colours often look different printed to on screen, but when you want something to stand out, why think let’s have the word ‘Green’ printed in green on a green background.
A relative is a graphic designer and when I mention these things or show her she usually twists her face up in confusion too. 
Im not a graphic designer or marketing expert but I like to think I have an eye for design, and sometimes I just don’t see the logic.