DT
What a sad day it'll be when that Gill Sans 'NEWS' disappears from the news frontpage. Really an end to the reign of a typeface that couldn't be more BBC if it tried. Sure, Reith is a perfectly serviceable body font, but my god does it suck for logos.
My only hope is that, like all internal BBC rebrands, it gets undone by Lambie Nairn in five years time. Probably saying 'why would you design a corporate typeface that looks like somebody said 'design me a generic 2010s sans serif font'?, also does The Guardian know you've stolen a copy of Guardian Egyptian?'.
I guess what annoys me about Reith so much is that when I heard the BBC were designing a new corporate typeface it was described as being in the Gill Sans tradition. And that would be great - as much as I am fond of Gill Sans, there are several characters that could be improved and Bliss doesn't quite do it for me as a 21st century British humanist sans serif. But then to roll out something that looks like a cross between Segoe and Verdana - fonts that couldn't be more ubiquitous if they tried - it's just frustrating. It's also short sighted - if you want brand longevity, you don't root it in something that is very clearly of the moment. The reason that MLN's 1997 rebrand was so successful was that it didn't scream 'this was designed in the 1990s'. In 8 years time, Reith will look dated and Gill will be celebrating its 100th birthday.
Does this mean the full switchover, including the logo, is imminent?
What a sad day it'll be when that Gill Sans 'NEWS' disappears from the news frontpage. Really an end to the reign of a typeface that couldn't be more BBC if it tried. Sure, Reith is a perfectly serviceable body font, but my god does it suck for logos.
My only hope is that, like all internal BBC rebrands, it gets undone by Lambie Nairn in five years time. Probably saying 'why would you design a corporate typeface that looks like somebody said 'design me a generic 2010s sans serif font'?, also does The Guardian know you've stolen a copy of Guardian Egyptian?'.
I guess what annoys me about Reith so much is that when I heard the BBC were designing a new corporate typeface it was described as being in the Gill Sans tradition. And that would be great - as much as I am fond of Gill Sans, there are several characters that could be improved and Bliss doesn't quite do it for me as a 21st century British humanist sans serif. But then to roll out something that looks like a cross between Segoe and Verdana - fonts that couldn't be more ubiquitous if they tried - it's just frustrating. It's also short sighted - if you want brand longevity, you don't root it in something that is very clearly of the moment. The reason that MLN's 1997 rebrand was so successful was that it didn't scream 'this was designed in the 1990s'. In 8 years time, Reith will look dated and Gill will be celebrating its 100th birthday.