(25 Jul 2020, 9:17 pm)ne14ne1 wrote What’s the story with the Green Arrows brand?
I guess when the Red Arrows brand came on the scene it was an express route with red buses so they named them after the red arrow planes - something the majority of people are aware of have connotations to speed and something quite cool and impressive.
But then Green Arrows popped up, followed by Blue Arrows(?) - back then GNE just seemed to want to brand everything, so they probably changed the colour on the fill tool to easily reuse an existing design & bang, another route branded. Okay, fair enough.

However now in the new era, if you will, where they’ve realised a corporate identity and house style would be beneficial and look more professional, Im curious to why they felt the need to maintain the Green Arrows brand.
I don’t use the route but can’t work out any local link to the name, (unlike when it was The Highwayman), and Whickham & Lobley Hill don’t exactly have other operators serving them that GNE needed to stand out from & compete with.

Since the enviro200MMCs arrived in the latest variation of Green Arrow livery I couldn’t help but wonder why they bothered keeping the brand in the first place, then why use an amateurish looking font, in a colour that doesn’t really contrast enough from its background to be easily read from a distance, and why the road strips didn’t stand out much either - which were the one thing that was supposed to make it easily recognisable as a GNE bus.

Just my opinion of course and everyone has their own tastes. I know many of you love the Green Arrows.

Thoughts?

Don't forget the Silver version used on the 2A and C between Washington and Sunderland.

I think the red version was 'inspired' by the service in Nottingham.
Coaches - tick
Two major regional cities - tick
Express/limited stop along fast roads - tick

Then the others came along like you say, in addition to the red colour scheme being rolled out on two other 'via Washington' expresses. You could be right about that template/colour scheme! Blue, green, silver and the other red incarnations certainly didn't tick the boxes the original X2 (or its equivalent in Nottingham) did.