Barclays, the sponsor of London’s hire bikes, have unveiled a puzzling rebrand for the scheme – just a year before they are set to relinquish their sponsorship.

The Barclays logo will shrink to a fraction of its current size. Instead, the ‘LifeSkills’ brand will take up the majority of the back mudguard.

LifeSkills is a programme run by Barclays that aims to help young people get a job. In operation for one year now, it provides schools with lesson plans for ‘work skills’, ‘people skills’ and ‘money skills’.

The rebrand was unveiled at the Skate Park on the South Bank by footballer Fabrice Muamba, Matthew Hancock MP, and LifeSkills’ ‘Young Ambassadors’. Muamba said “I’ve always been a big fan of London’s Barclays Cycle Hire bikes” and called the rebrand “fantastic”.

Somehow we think it’s unlikely that the new branding will replace the phrase “Boris bikes” in regular speech.