I have to say, I'd be perfectly happy for the circles to continue for a good few years yet. A change would be lovely, of course - but equally I think there's merit in continuing what is, to be frank, a decent concept.
Having said that, a refresh would be nice; a general tidy up, if you will. I'm still not a big fan of the logo and the way in which is doesn't really fit with any of the other logos (see my rant about BBC Parliament in that particular thread). Not sure exactly how to resolve that, but a refresh on that could be nice, especially if a consistent style was developed and rolled out to all the channels at the same time - ITV/Sky style uniformity, but with variation. This change could bring the channels together nicely.
Additionally, I'd love to see the idents tweaked. I've never liked the problems that the shorter edits introduced of the slight weakening of the circle concept as I see it. For example, in the surfer ident, there are relatively long periods where the logo is on top of - well, something other than a circle. See 1'25" in the POV clip for another example. I'd honestly say ditch the surf ident if the footage can't be made to work, it's not like it hasn't had enough airings. Change the hippos one so that the hippo swims 'over' the logo (shock horror, it would mean the logo being off screen for two seconds but I think that'd actually draw attention to it). Bring back the windows one, the moon one, they're brilliant. Refilm a load more. They honestly don't have to be expensive to produce or that imaginative, but would freshen things up with more in rotation. Repurpose some 'special' idents into regular ones, a bit like they did with the Chrismas penguin ident (you never see that anymore, do you?!).
I'd also perhaps give the logo some stylistic treatment to place it 'in' the scene. In fairies, make it look like it was made out of leaves, in the football one it could be 'painted' onto the ground. Why not? It would make it look less like 'logo on stock footage'.
Just a few thoughts on how to address concerns about staleness, but refresh and improve the look.
Part of the problem is how cack-handedly the 2009 re-edits were done. There didn't seem to be much pride or sensitivity to the originals in how they were revised. In the original version, the Hippos did swim over the logo, the main dog in Dog Display was seen to walk over it, etc. The swirl animation was also often colour matched to the surroundings. Little details like that were lost for no reason other than sloppiness/laziness.
And yes, it looks rubbish when the logo is slapped on screen for extended periods sans circle, only serving to block the footage. As it has turned out, these demonstrably inferior versions have been in use far longer than the launch idents, which did already have short, medium and long edits available. This was and is a shame.
It's quite interesting that Timehop chose to cover this as their "on this day" topic being an American based company. I guess they chose to use the balloon as its widely recognised as representing the BBC as it was used on BBC America as well as BBC One. Similarly, I believe BBC America currently uses adaptations of the BBC One circle idents.
MR
mr_vivian
It is a fantastic tribute there from Timehop.
The balloon was great and it works brilliantly as an animation. I'm not quite sure what's iconic about the dancers or the current ones.
BBC America actually doesn't use the Circle idents any more; they've since switched to a flat look. And before that, they had switched to a look involving squares...
