30 years Since Central cake

Similarly for Central's cake, while their playout systems all called it 'Central Presentation Kit' a lot of the tapes were labelled as 'Cake'

I can only assume it was the only comparable thing to a big round object being cut up into pieces.

If Lambie-Nairn had been given the task to create a new look for Central back then, they would probably have sought to give it a look that distinguished it from Channel 4, rather than purposely trying to make them similar. As it turned out, the artificial 3D blockyness of the Channel 4 ident would become a bit atypical of Lambie-Nairn's work. Martin Lambie-Nairn has also later claimed that the flying 3D graphics wasn't at the core of the Channel 4 logo's success (although I think that is understating it a bit).

Lambie-Nairn were nonetheless swamped with requests to create flying 3D logos and they did create Scottish Television's 1985 thistle ident which has some of those characteristics (and incidentally also launched this month 30 years ago). That ident was however not particularly liked by anyone involved, including Martin himself.

Didnt Martin Lambie-Nairn created the Carlton/ Central package of Late 1996? ( with central putting it off by 18months)

They did indeed:

http://thetvroom.com/itv/itv-carlton-london-05-01.html

Yet everyone seems to hate them. To be far Central had been using the cake for over 12 years and the coloured stripes for over 15 years. It had tried everything under the sun, Im not sure what else you could do with it. Even Ch4 had enough after 14 years and played around with stuff, for the following 8 years cirules and blocks, before going back to the original concept of 1982 ident but in a modern setting.




I never know alot of people disliked that ident. You have to wonder why there went ahead and used it. Maybe Martin went about it the wrong way and could have tried created the ident but in the fashion of the rotating ident a few years early?

Lambie Nairn also did the Carlton "star" package 1999-2002. Whilst sad to lose Central as a brand, it was a great package.

I'm sure everyone has seen the Lambie-Nairn showreels posted here : http://brandingsource.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/lambie-nairn-showreel-from-1996.html But if they haven't - there they are.

Personally I thought the Anglia idents from the late 80s were incredibly clean, stylish and well executed. It was a tough act to replace the Anglia Knight, but it was incredibly dated.

All that's needed is for the background to be a little more dynamic, and you have a timeless ident there

I do wonder how much longer that ident would have lasted if the regional pres had survived. The ident only got canned for the hearts, and the logo went away along with all the others when the celeb idents launched, so if Anglia had remained independent like UTV, that ident could easily have survived some time longer than it's 11 year run.

Yep - the slate background, like the similar 80s cartridge paper texture used at the time, is the only thing that really dates it. The foreground elements still stand up very well today.

I do wonder if it influenced the BBC World and later BBC News 24 identities that Lambie Nairn were also involved with. (Well I don't wonder... I'm sure it did.)

People hate them because it was Carlton and the fact they were also belatedly forced upon Central. They were good idents despite all of that. They were a clever way of getting around the fact Carlton had real no logo per se that had the versatility that the Central cake or BBC '2' had. Instead, they played on the letters. Of course, Central had a perfectly good logo and it wasn't replaced because it was deemed life-expired but purely for political reasons within Carlton.