I assume all the logos are now plain and clear so they can be easily used across all media - you can see those working on mobile phones etc - bold and clear, rather than some of the old ones.
Nicky, I note your use of the word 'assume'.
Is there anything within the BBC to suggest that these are in any way "official" - I find it a bit difficult to believe they're all being rebranded like this (especially if you think of the brand recognition of the current lot, and the way some of them are used on TV - ie the Five Live animation.)
Are 6 Music and BBC7 also getting a revamp? (hopefully BBC7 won't be binning their clever logo as well)
The digital-only stations were renamed on DAB recently - 'BBC 6 Music' to 'BBC Radio 6 Music', '1Xtra - BBC' to 'BBC Radio 1Xtra' and 'BBC 7' to 'BBC Radio 7' - so perhaps this is all linked in together?
My understanding is
that
was simply to ensure they were grouped together in the correct order in various alphabetically sorted EPGs.
The Five Live one is good.The Radio 3 one is horrible.
About the R1 one,it's not that different.
The Radio 3 one is nice, quite clever (that's a bass cleff making up the top of the 3 of course). Radio 4's is ok, they seem to have returned back to the speech mark idea of a few years back.
Not so keen on 2 and 5, they look a bit, well, too simple.
I do admit that the tweaking does seem rather pointless. All the others look dreadful and very Microsoft Paintish. . .And I'm so disappointed they're getting rid of Radio 2's lovely neon 2s.
Agreed on that 100%. These aren't an absolute disaster, but still an unnecessary rebrand, I feel.
So they're all placed within solid colour circles to give them consistency, i gather that much - but when it comes to the numeral design, where has the individuality and imagination gone?
Radio 2's (aforementioned) Neon 2, Radio 4's angled shadowcast 4, and the experssive, arty Radio '3' all dumped -- in favour of this generally quite straightforward and alike set by comparison. The unique character of each has been diminished.
Any overall stylistic difference between them has been placed into the 'background' design (in this case what you see toward the bottom of each image) which I initially ignored anyway, due to being naturally drawn to the numeral - and that's the first sign that they've got it somewhat wrong there.
I'd argue it should be the entire background that is generally kept simple, and the logo - the point of focus - being the distinctive trait that characterizes (as it has been until now) - not the other way round. I suspect Radio 2's logo will suffer the most from the change.
Odd how, while BBC Television ID designs are - if recent BBC One is anything to go by - seemingly turning away from tradition due to over-creative, rather unfitting new concepts, BBC Radio logos now seem to be going in the opposite direction of, while still suitable and on-message, becoming more over-simplified and less distinctive.
Surely the whole point of these new logos is to make the radio station logos all look uniform - if they're all the same "shape", they're much easier to integrate into websites, interactive TV, listings guides, etc...
So why put the "live" of Five Live
outside
the circle? Why use a "5" not a "Five"?
Radio 3 looks the best, Radio 4 is quite clever (similar to the old "lightbulbs/quote marks" design, but Radios 2 and 5 really could be better.