BBC Two 2009: A few ideas (updated)

What can I say?! Absolutely superb.

Your (brave) idea of moving the BBC TWO logo to the left at the end of the trails gives you a lot of scope for different styles for different programmes - the NASA programme trailer works particularly well. You've got the text size and weight spot on as well.

Paul's Mirror sting is, of course, much better than those brightly-coloured bumper things they've occasionnally used since the refresh - it would make a rather good 91-01 style ident!

Love the little BBC HD logo beneath the subtitles DOG - I would have thought these would be quite common by now, but there seems to be a reluctance to introduce them.

I think I know what you mean about the endboard sliding in from the right - the animation of the the info panel sliding in on an S4C endboard (0:16 on this, for example) wouldn't look too bad, though I imagine it would be quite difficult to animate it properly.

(BTW - I went to see if there was an example on TV Live but your S4C page isn't finished yet - I noticed though that some of the links on the Channel 4 page weren't working, though the ones in the side menu are.)

These are fantastic compared to what we have at the moment but, although I wouldn't go as far as Chie's "do away with endboards", I think using an ident is a bit too much. I think the original 2007 endboards would work perfectly with this look.

Let's face it - anything is better than what we have now.

Although the first batch look best, I don't think simply going back in time is what's needed. I think the last idea has the most potential, but the BBC needs to be centred vertically IMO, rather than bottom left.

Much better than what's in use now, particularly for how it connects to the rest of the pres, but I reckon that's also a very good call on the Avenir weights and positioning.

Of course as you only have idents and stings to work with, you can't really avoid having endboards that look similar to the rest of the pres, so it's wrong for anyone to mark you down for that.

By the way, the use of 1994's special Moon symbol for the NASA trail was a nice touch, regardless of it not being part of the present look!


Chris mentioned that simply using the original 2007 boards might have worked here: from a cross-channel perspective, the all-teal/aqua board compliments BBC One's all-red backgrounds as they both use largely solid colour, yes - but the mock updates here have scrapped the teal box that used to compliment those old boards, perhaps making the use of that colour not such a clear-cut decision.

On the flipside, BBC Two since 2007 does not have a signature colour within the symbols (sans-logo), but you could argue that many of BBC One's symbols are also lacking, suggested by the decision to add the red swish to the logo as part of the revision earlier this year, to reinforce it. So you could experiment going back down the route of giving BBC Two back its own identifying colour.

If the teal was to be re-instated, to work alongside BBC One's red (possibly along with the old teal endboard to help consistency), a move to further help the two channels compliment each other, could be to carry over the mock endboard ideas above, apply them to the pointers, fade the video somewhat and give it an aqua tint - in the same way BBC One uses red-tinted symbol footage for its pointer backgrounds. Admittedly, these are ideas more geared toward improving cross-promotion and consistency than toward aesthetics, but I'm wondering how otherwise the lack of an identifying colour would affect the ECP logo situation... Perhaps something to mull over.