Carlton 1999-2002 Idents

I think it's pretty clear to most here that Carlton introduced a wonderful set of idents in 1999 compared to the dross that had gone before. It came though at at the expense of the on-screen names of Central and Westcountry (and nearly HTV but they ended up with a hybrid of both main looks around at the time). Even nearly 14 years after the Carlton idents left our screens, they still look incredibly wonderful and not dated at all IMO.

I dare say the majority were computer animated (especially the Christmas ones with the fireworks in the sky) but there were a few with "real life" objects in them - swans, strawberries to name but two and the other impressive one with the fireworks and the balloon.

This was my favourite out of however many were introduced, was it about 9 overall not counting the Christmas ones?

I loved these. It's a shame we don't see any nice CGI idents like these today.

A little bit of background into what Carlton wanted from Lambie-Nairn.

Can't help but think that Mr Cameron might have had some say over this, or at least the bullsh*t Carlton wanted to push themselves as.

This is surely the best one. Great soundtrack, great visuals.

They were of course also adapted very well for HTV with the heart morphing into the V of HTV. (3:42 - 4:21 - 3 examples)

Brand identity (besides their first crack at it) is something Carlton was fantastic at. That and making money. Little else.

Was that contender for most heart symbols crammed into five seconds?
But otherwise, great ident, forgot about that one.

I meant to add to the original post actually, the Planet ident was used extensively in the days after 9/11 (or at least it was in the Central region) as it fitted the mood perfectly, for want of a better phrase.

The regular news/serious ident if Planet wasn't used was this one:

That was always my favourite. It was normally used before the news, although down here they just said "This is Carlton Television" after dropping the "in the Westcountry", of course.

I enjoyed the swans and harpy theme (minus pointless strawberry):


I remember the PR-tripe at the time these launched, describing how the idents show that Carlton was "the STAR at the HEART of the ITV Network"... See what they did there...

There's a much better quality version (avec strawberry) on this vid.

That tripe actually makes more sense than some of the other rubbish we've heard recently.

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itvlondon/carlton-idents4.html Master copies are on TV ark