KiwiRail's Great Journeys New Zealand Wins Prestigious Best Design Awards

KiwiRail’s Great Journeys New Zealand’s new Scenic Plus signature carriage designs have won Gold in the Spatial Design category in the prestigious Best Design Awards.

The awards ceremony on Friday night also saw the team take home Silver in the Large Brand Identity category and Bronze in the Environmental Graphics category for their Manuhiri brand concept and design.

“We are so proud to see our Manuhiri branding recognised in such a big way,” says Tracey Goodall, General Manager of Great Journeys New Zealand and Commuter. “More than three years were invested in crafting the exquisite and meaningful designs to enhance our new premium offering.”

Presented with the challenge of creating a premium rail experience in addition to its core offerings, Great Journeys New Zealand made the decision early in the process to invest heavily in design and story to guide the creation of its new Scenic Plus product.

New carriages provide Scenic Plus service passengers with an elevated rail experience showcasing New Zealand's landscapes, stories and paddock-to-plate flavours. The carriage design includes a coiling bird representative of the manuhiri (guests) onboard, and a ‘guardian’s eye' sculpture acting as a guardian for those on the journey.

Ms Goodall says the new carriages were intentionally designed to offer a premium atmosphere that would attract visitors to New Zealand’s shores and regions. To enable this, KiwiRail understood the importance of creating a world-class and distinctly New Zealand design for the carriages.

“Everything was done at home in New Zealand, from working collaboratively with local design company Designworks, to our KiwiRail team bringing the new carriage interior designs to life in Wellington,” she says.

“We used the concept of manuhiri to create a signature aesthetic and service style, drawing from the colours, textures and forms of our native birdlife and the landscapes they call home,” says Ms Goodall. “The design is underpinned by our rich cultural tapestry and is intended to leave a long lasting and memorable imprint on our manuhiri.”

This week a new Scenic Plus signature carriage with the award-winning branding was added to the Coastal Pacific Scenic train, with the final signature carriage set to launch on the Northern Explorer at the end of this year.

The BEST Design Awards are Australasia’s largest annual showcase of excellence across all aspects of design.

KiwiRail received funding through the Provincial Growth Fund in 2019 for the new carriages.

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