Channel 4 rebrand - September 2015

That depends. How long did it take you to tire of things tenuously forming circles on BBC1?

They're actual idents though, not short episodic clips of a story. They've done well for all the years they've been on air too. I don't predict the same success for these brandless short films.

It's just like any logo - you see the Nike 'swoosh' on some shoes lots of times and you associate that shape with Nike trainers. That's how brand recognition works


If you took someone who has never seen channel 4 before and they watched it enough times they's associate those specific shapes with the channel - they appear every 10-15 minutes all day every day

But the shapes are ch4.

I disagree. The Nike 'swoosh' will always be associated with Nike, but break it up and they just become a load of random pieces. There's no specific section of the 'swoosh' that makes the 'swoosh'. You also have to remember that we're a bunch of pres enthusiasts who've given the Channel 4 logo, among others, far more attention that the average Joe would. If you gathered the blocks and said to somebody "what channel uses these blocks for their logo" they might guess Channel 4, but having them lying around on the ground, or having one lone block under a microscope (or whatever it is) is pushing it IMO. I explained to my Dad that C4 had rebranded and showed what they were using to introduce the programmes, his response was "what the f*** was that!?"

A logo made from blocks is not comparable to a single shape.

That's my point.

And yet you compared them. A logo made from blocks is more amenable to being broken up than a single shape.

If you'd care to read the thread back, you'll see Inspector Sands made the comparison to the Nike logo, and I explained that you can't compare them because the swoosh isn't made up of different shapes.

But his comparison didn't have anything to do with that. He said that brand recognition comes about from familiarity - nothing to do with how the logo is made; hence the confusion on my part.

The director of several BBC Two idents just uploaded this..

Cool. So if it's that simple, why not just change to something totally unrelated to the 4 logo, say, a pentagon with a triangle inside it.? Surely the rule is the same: show people it enough and they'll associate it with the channel. To me there are two issues with this: firstly, you're starting again, as most people won't be first time viewers and will remember your old logo (random blocks are very different to the Lambie-Nairn '4') and secondly, it makes the assumption that all branding is equally effective. The Nike tick is a design classic, as is the McDonalds 'M', the British Rail double arrow or indeed the Lambie-Nairn '4'. Blocks randomly applied are not.

Another thing where me and you, along with a couple of others seem to differ is that you appear to see the Channel 4 logo as made of blocks de facto, whether it be the 2004-15 idents or even in its 2D form. I don't see it that way and I don't reckon most muggles do either.