BBC Select to return as a brand

They are both sans serif fonts so there will always be a high degree of similarity between them, of course.

However, the Reith "font" doesn't have the stylish extra reach of the lower part of the "B" in Gill Sans.

Reith is a functional boring font beloved by people with no elan or elegance, I'm afraid.

Yes. The BBC letters in the blocks logo, much like the BBC Two 2, are just based off of Gill Sans and are not actually available in any commercially available version of Gill Sans. The letters are slightly thicker and wider than the standard weight of Gill Sans and the closest commercial version that exists is Gill Sans Nova Semibold (which, of course, was created years later).

If I remember correctly, the letters were slightly altered so that they would work better at small resolutions on screen (one of the key flaws in the 1988 logo) and would avoid issues when printed (this was particularly the case for the initial strip logos as, if the BBC letters were not bolder than the brand name, ink run would have caused the black brand name to look bolder than the white BBC letters).

This is quite normal in graphic design and you'll normally have the master copy of a logo as an EPS rather than using the font itself.

The B&Q logo for example is, IIRC, Univers but with the tail on the Q changed. The "Welcome! Everything is fine." lettering in The Good Place uses a custom "more relaxing" exclamation mark.

From MLN himself

Feels so utterly half-arsed that it’s as if they’ve given up on the concept before it’s even begun.

Spotted this similar logo on a BBC job posting on facebook... seems a brand refresh is on the way

I don't think that's Reith, just a poorly-recreated version of the existing Gill Sans logo.

That’s been posted before. I still think it’s a version of the logo designed to be used at very small sizes.

What is going on here. There will be Master Brand assets, and all the brand guidelines will call out never re-create the logo . There is an online page for requesting a copy of the BBC Logo assets if you are staff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/branding/logo-use

You do have to ask yourself, is this just staff being lazy, have the BBC stopped releasing the logo to those requesting, or is there a plan underway to update the actual BBC logo, but they are still iterating and so we get these inconsistent versions right now?

Surely a version to be displayed very small would require the letters to be larger if anything. Smaller, and they’d disappear.

I think it’s just, as Warbler says, a bad recreation.

Both Occam and Hanlon's Razor would dictate this is most likely error/laziness/incompetence. Given that the non-authentic BBC logos that have triggered this, dare I say, overreaction are all different and of a very poor quality, I would be even less convinced that this is some kind of secret rebranding operation. Not to mention the fact it would be totally nonsensical to replace a logo with a near-identical, but worse, version of the same logo and even more nonsensical to do that literally months after replacing half the subbrand logos across the BBC. I would expect that if the BBC were to have Reithified the blocks, it would have been stage 1 of the roll-out rather that half-way through it.

Also, IIRC, the previous rebrand policy for the BBC has been core brands first and expanding outwards (as in 1988 and 1997). I highly doubt that the BBC would be testing their new branding on an obscure, non-UK service.

@DTV I would say to that, when the Press Office site, and a new product launch is announced, with a Twitter Account and Website made for this new thing - when they all use a Logo which looks obviously poorly mocked up - you do have to wonder...