BBC Northern Ireland Presentation

"Corrected" implies that it was not right in the first place; and, it isn't! The BBC One logo was not designed with the regional brands in mind. As far as I am aware, when the package was being developed in 2006, there was a push to drop the regional brands from BBC One's on-screen presentation. A deliberate decision may well have been taken to place the 'Northern Ireland' text where it is today but that decision was taken (AFAIK) AFTER the BBC One logo was designed, and, as I say, from what I can gather, the main logo was not designed with the regional brands in mind. So, where BBC NI is concerned, it was very probably a case of attempting to make the best of what they'd been given.

The length of the 'Northern Ireland' legend leaves the overall logo off-centre. It's not as bad on the idents, but on the lower third on trails, it looks ridiculous. It's particularly bad on endboards for Panorama, where the programme details are centred.

I am aware that BBC NI increased the size of the font used for the 'Northern Ireland' text on the lower third captions on trails, as the original size resulted in the text being difficult to read (although many trails for the 'Spotlight' programme continue to use the smaller font size for some reason). I have no issue there - they should definitely be doing what they can to emphasise their brand.

I should stress here that this is not a criticism of BBC NI. This pres package was designed in London, and I don't believe the regions had much say (if any at all), in what we see on screen today.

Where the BBC Two Northern Ireland box logo is concerned - again, this is a similar situation. These logos were designed in London, and as usual, little consideration was given for the regional brands. The BBC Two Northern Ireland boxed logo looks awful. How can you push/sell a regional brand with text that small? Many of the BBC NI pres directors clearly take great pride in their work, and it's terribly unfair that they've been saddled with these awful logos.

Those boxed logos are particularly useless on ECPs - the regional identification text is so small, there's little point having it there at all.

Idents aside, Final Score from NI is currently cutting back and forth between live feeds of the Glentoran v Cliftonville and Crusaders v Linfield games - with Sir Jackie Fullerton commentating at the Oval and Grant Cameron commentating at Seaview. Not sure if this is a special thing for the last weekend of the League, and surprised Stephen Watson isn't presenting or even covering the Crues/Blues match.

Bet UTV's coverage a bit later will be a lesser affair... if they've even bothered sending reporters and crews out.

EDIT: As well as commentators, BBC NI have reporters at the Oval (Gavin Andrews - yum) and Thomas Kane at Seaview.

Just spotted another ridiculous example of illegible logos on a BBC NI trail - a "Bikes!" trail featured the "red box" BBC ONE logo - with the "Northern Ireland" legend in a remarkable small font size.

Yes, this is the new BBC Sport trail style. This is the height of stupidity - you would quite literally need a magnifying glass to make out the 'Northern Ireland' text. What IS the point??

On the subject of Final Score, I see BBC NI still insist on using that horrific-looking 'BBC NI SPORT' sting at the end of the programme. Never mind the find that it bears no resemblance to the current BBC Sport branding, the BBC logo is wrong, and 'NI SPORT' is in Arial or some similar font. Strangely, a more up-to-date BBC Sport NI sting featured in the trail which followed the programme. There's an issue with that logo too; however, it's a vast improvement on its (local) predecessor.

Agree about the ECP - that and the BBC Sport trailers should just have the Network logos without the NI/Scotland/Wales branding.

What if the logo text was freed from the box on the idents/trailers and was just a transparent overlay, giving the 'Northern Ireland' room to breathe, and maybe stacking it like in Martin's BBC One mocks? I'm no graphic designer so it's not perfect and could do with a white/teal animation of some sort, but what do you think? (Zoetrope's probably not the best one to try this on, but hey!)

http://g.imagehost.org/0426/bbc2ni_identmock2.png

If there was some way of incorporating the new BBC Northern Ireland logo into the idents, that would be good. I'd drop the BBC Two logo box completely. The combination of the '2' and the BBC Northern Ireland logo (including BBC Northern Ireland text) would be a better job - it would certainly promote the brand a lot better than at present. The stylised 'NI' used during the 1970s and early-1980s was good, and was instantly recogniseable. If Marketing people in London don't give a hoot about the regional brands, then the regions should find alternative ways of highlighting their brands.

How about something like this?

http://g.imagehost.org/0621/bbc2ni-trailermock3.png

That isn't an ident though, is it?

I'm quite aware of that. Like I said yesterday, I'm not a graphic designer. I haven't got the knowledge, nor the resources to remove the box from an ident that doesn't have a dark background like Zoetrope does. The NI logo would overlap the '2' on the 'TV Room' cap I used above (because of the nature of the Zoetrope ident) and, as I expected to be immediately shouted down if I uploaded such an image, I stopped and created the trailer slide instead. Hope my intentions are now more clear.

Call me old fashioned but I would much prefer to see something like this:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w191/2007TopGearDog/bbc2nimock-1.png

Unfortunately I think the new NI logo is too loud to be incorporated into the existing idents effectively.

I like that - as a logo, it's much neater, even if most of the idents have the '2' positioned off-centre.
NI and Scotland could probably make the 'own logo only' scenario work, but I think BBC Wales would struggle to do it with their logo given that it relies on its red box (which I imagine would clash with the teal horribly!)

Stephen Watson was at the Tandragee 100 motorbike races.