The Newsroom

BBC Newsnight

(March 2010)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
NG
noggin Founding member

As long as you have an eye for it, manual kerning should be easy-peasy.


And the irony is that it was a standard function on even early-80s to 90s Caption Generators like Aston 3, Aston 4, Motif/Ethos etc. It was sometimes called Delta-Spacing, and most decent CG ops would spend some time (if they had the time) to tweak things to look nicer.

Early Cap Gens had to include a manual delta-space/kerning option because they didn't have letter-pair kerning tables in their typefaces - but even when Postscript/Truetype style vector fonts were introduced in the early-90s, manual kerning was still possible (particularly as cheap typefaces often have poor kerning tables)


the version of Gill Sans that the BBC use on astons has a particularly annoying kerning fault on the letters a and u. They appear extremely close together in words like 'author' and apparently there's very little that can be done about it (though if Motif has Delta-spacing perhaps I ought to investigate!). You see this appear on any region that uses an Aston - even on the daytime BBC One news summaries!


If you are using automation to generate CGs then Delta Spacing isn't going to help - you do it manually for each character as you type the caption (or in busy areas you typed every caption in as quickly as possible, and then went back and made them look nicer if you had time!)
RT
rts Founding member
Watched my first proper edition from NBH last night. The opening titles weren't *as* disastrous as I feared. I can also not express how happy I am to see Swiss back as the font du jour. Gil Sans is a good font, synonymous with Britain and the BBC. But as on-screen font it just doesn't work.
JC
JCB
The opening titles have grown on me. They could be better but they're not by any means the worst news-show titles on TV.
GE
thegeek Founding member
JCB posted:
The opening titles have grown on me. They could be better but they're not by any means the worst news-show titles on TV.


I think their problem is they're trying to show off New BH, but New BH isn't a particularly distinctive building - at least, not from above. Your average man on the street might recognise Old BH, so maybe they ought to use that as the establishing shot?
IT
itsrobert Founding member
JCB posted:
The opening titles have grown on me. They could be better but they're not by any means the worst news-show titles on TV.


I think their problem is they're trying to show off New BH, but New BH isn't a particularly distinctive building - at least, not from above. Your average man on the street might recognise Old BH, so maybe they ought to use that as the establishing shot?


Yep, plus the new titles are far too short to accomplish anything anyway.
MO
Moz
The new look Newsnight launched tonight.

(I'm not counting the first 3 this week as they didn't have a proper presenter)

Looks amazing!
SO
southwales
Kirsty is fab
DF
DrewF
Moz posted:
The new look Newsnight launched tonight.

(I'm not counting the first 3 this week as they didn't have a proper presenter)

Looks amazing!


If you decided not to comment on the Newsnight relaunch till today just because of the presenter then you really are a moron!

Although Newsnight did look good in TC7 (probably the best looking program from there) it looks really excellent in it's new home. Looks a lot cleaner and neater even though the space isn't quite as flexible.
DK
DanielK
Would have looked even better like this!!

http://jim-mann.com/?p=249
RT
rts Founding member
Would have looked even better like this!!

http://jim-mann.com/?p=249

Why they hell didn't they go for that!
WO
Worzel
rts posted:
Would have looked even better like this!!

http://jim-mann.com/?p=249

Why they hell didn't they go for that!


I always thought that backdrop looked fantastic. It also screamed new broadcasting house, especially with the spiral staircase on the left.
JO
Jon
rts posted:
Would have looked even better like this!!

http://jim-mann.com/?p=249

Why they hell didn't they go for that!

It's nice, but it's clearly not right for Newsnight, as Jim Mann says himself in the comments.

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