Canadian National Railway

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Brand information:

Website	CN
Country	Canada
Industry	Transportation

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The CN logo features red color:

This is a color scheme of CN. You can copy each of the Canadian National Railway logo colors by clicking on a button with the color HEX code above.

The Canadian National Railway is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada’s largest railway, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia across approximately 20,400 route miles of track. In the late 20th century, CN gained extensive capacity in the United States by taking over such railroads as the Illinois Central. CN is a public company with 24,000 employees, and as of July 2019 it has a market cap of approximately CA$90 billion. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding in 1919 until being privatized in 1995. As of 2019, Bill Gates is the largest single shareholder of CN stock, owning a 10.04% interest through Cascade Investment and his own Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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History of the CN Logo

The Canadian National Railways (CN) was formed in 1923 when the Canadian government merged several bankrupt railroads into a single, large rail network. At the time, its main competitor was Canadian Pacific. By the mid-20th century, CN faced financial challenges due to poor management. To address this, the company launched a significant modernisation effort. Diesel engines replaced steam locomotives, computer-controlled systems were implemented, the freight fleet was upgraded, equipment was improved, and the organisational structure was revamped.

Despite these efforts, a public opinion study conducted by CN’s Public Relations Department, involving interviews with 4,000 adults, revealed that these changes went largely unnoticed. Many Canadians still perceived CN as outdated and unchanged.

Recognising this issue, Dick Wright, head of CN’s Public Relations, and his assistant Charles Harris (who later succeeded Wright), proposed revitalising the company’s public image to reflect its modernisation efforts. They initially envisioned this as a straightforward project to create a new logo. However, after consulting New York designer Jim Valkus, it evolved into a comprehensive corporate design program. Valkus emphasized the importance of addressing broader branding and design elements to effectively communicate CN’s transformation.