When the Live bug, yellow ticker, breaking news caption and the permanent Sky News logo are on it just looks cluttered - every corner is full of graphics!
I just get the feeling they don't look quite finished - sometimes they don't even animate and just flash on and off.
I think the clock could do with being next to the logo and keeping the ticker all the way across. Plus as people have said, I still don't know why they don't use yellow on black for the breaking news captions to match the ticker.
All in all, not really impressed. Can't say they're an improvement neither worse.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few changes are made over the next few days....
As a Virgin customer I don't get Sky News, so can't really comment. The only opinions I have are on the first vid posted on p.1. I just hope that wasn't the first appearance of the graphics amends - as they totally botched it.
Even down to showing the coming up VT and website screenshot the wrong way round. Tsk.
Hmm, its substantially still the previous look, but with the astons look like they've been cut-out of the previous ones (was wondering when someone would copy CNN-I's subtitleseque astons) and some very-superfulous 3D animation).
In substance though, Sky News' format hasn't really changed, least not at first glance.
I notice that 2 reporters have been arrested in Zimbabwe for reporting without a permit - wonder if one of them is Emma Hurd?
One of them is from The New York Times.
Did anyone see the 'on our website' graphic earlier this hour? They were promoting an interview or something with Yoko Ono but the headline said "
Toko
Speaks".
Okay, point by point, my thoughts on the new look.
The only real CNNI element is the story lower thirds, and they really should make the story text a bit larger, or the story title a bit smaller.
Don't like the animations used during the programmes. Reminds me too much of Fox News.
TOTH is really poor. Best TOTH that I have ever seen from Sky News is the 1998 look. Seems to have been padded out to create a longer TOTH, rather than really thought out.
It really seems to be a tweak of a bad look, and it has improved, but not much. Still much more work to be done. Takes the channel from a D- to a D+.
I think it looks great. Really clean and simple with reduced screen clutter. I've never been a fan of Sky News - more of a News 24 man myself. However, this refresh is the most tolerable I have seen from Sky.
Awful, appalling mess.
Left aligned astons are one thing but to build them in such a fashion with a ragged right margin just looks incredibly ugly. Either round the box off to build it a rectangle or don't put it in a box at all.
Nothing lines up with anything and nothing is connected to anything else. I know I keep banging on about this in the Mocks forum but little things make all the difference. I'd rather the astons sat on top of the ticker rather than having a little floaty gap between them - just looks neater IMO.
Looked far better when the permanent graphics all sat in either one place or corner, now they're beginning to spread out again, in fact a big deal was made out of the 2005 relaunch for having the URL, clock, Active and ticker all on the one line. Now they've gone and undone it all again. Move the Live bugs to underneath the channel bug like it was before the 2005 relaunch, looks so much neater.
Quite why they couldn't put the (admittedly smaller) cube on top of the clock and then stick a Live tag on top of that I will never know, plus it'd get rid of all the clutter at the top of the screen and keep everything in four lines at the bottom of the screen. Okay the astons would move to the right but no big deal. Not keen on the animations either, like watching a PowerPoint presentation.
Tweaks will inevitably follow so there is hope of salvaging something out of this but as it stands I'd probably struggle to give it more than 3 if it were posted as a mock.
