Group 2

VIA Rail Canada Creating a friendly new face for VIA Rail’s brightest train.

In July 2024, VIA Rail gave one of its new Québec City-Windsor corridor trains a special paint job. It’s the only train in the new fleet with this design, painted in VIA’s classic yellow while the rest of the fleet is grey. The name is short for luminosity, and the look is a nod to the Turbo Train that ran between Montréal and Toronto until 1982.

VIA’s Communications team wanted to give that train a face. They asked us to turn Lumi into a mascot that would make VIA feel friendlier and less corporate, and that could show up in a social media series, as GIFs on GIPHY, and on merch like stickers, pins, shirts and plush toys. They also wanted a second version based on Venture, the grey trains that make up the rest of the fleet.

We began with our Currency Exchange discovery session to figure out who Lumi is. VIA described someone fun, curious, a little goofy and slightly cheeky. They also wanted Lumi to be genderless. Their goal was that when people see Lumi, they should want to take the train.

The real train is sleek and sharp-edged. To make Lumi feel warmer, we kept the shape recognizable but softened the corners and put the face in the windshield. Our first round was eight hand-drawn sketches in four styles, from a classic, gentle mascot to a big cartoon take. We also explored optional details, including a nose, a small chin inspired by the front of the train, and the fleet number on the forehead.

VIA called the sketches “adorable,” and the final character brought together the strongest elements from several directions. We dropped the eyelashes to keep Lumi genderless, lost the nose and chin, greyed the windshield to match the real train, and kept the number 2317. Since Lumi would mostly appear small, on social posts and stickers, we cut any detail that would get lost at that size. We also created two versions of Lumi for the front of the train: one with the simple yellow VIA mark for everyday use, and one with the full VIA Rail Canada logo for larger pieces.

For Venture, we suggested keeping the same shape and changing the personality instead. Venture wears the grey fleet colours with a red maple leaf, and has dark eyes where Lumi’s are golden. Lumi stays the standout, just like the real train.

The full set delivered includes both characters in six expressions (happy, laughing, confused, interested, sad and crying), front, back, side and top views, and short looping animations of them waving, winking and laughing. Everything was supplied as vector and image files ready for social, animation and merch.

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