Who created the Meridian ident?

For their license application the Westcountry logo was a weather vane pointing west type design, but as you say when they were announced the winner the reports didn't include a logo

I think it was the other way around, Meridian's came first

Of course there is a parallel the other way - Anglican Windows uses a knight on horseback as their logo: http://www.anglianhome.co.uk/

Bear in mind that the name on the VT clock is more likely to be the facilities house that produced the item rather than the one who designed it. The 1990's BBC idents for example were Lambie Nairn creations but none had LN on the VT clock

Just done a quick search and this book is in fact in my uni library. I'll definitely take a look at it over the weekend.

I'm fairly certain that the Meridian logo isn't featured in Lambie Nairn's book. It is a very good read though

I can't remember the company, but it was certainly some sort of design agency.

The original Meridian logo for the application was different. The head was fatter I seem to remember.

Nah, the Southern Electric logo came first. The original Meridian logo had one eye much smaller than the other if I remember correctly.

Must have been the year before as Southern came into being in 1990

Ok so I've just had a look through that book.

The Meridian logo is indeed featured in there, however Lambie Nairn didn't design it. They were originally meant to be awarded the identity programme for the station but their relations ended up being short-lived as Meridian went with someone else after they won. The board didn't like the "marketing tree" idea that LN had come up with which suggested that the branding needed to be centrally controlled with marketing and scheduling working together (or something like that) in order for the brand to be like a product you buy off a shelf, something he says has never been truly achieved in the UK.

The Meridian bit is very small but there are some great tidbits in there: they designed the French TF1 logo which is still in use today, LN's rebranding of a German channel (Tele5) jointly owned by rival networks was so successful that the channel was closed to avoid the owners' main channels facing ratings dispare, Carlton's logo had that little 'T' so that the logo would easily morth in "LONDON", and BSB had a bit of an internal meltdown pre-launch with the marketing people wanting fancy names like "Galaxy", "Now" and "Power Station" while the programming people wanted straight-forward names like "The Movie/Sport Channel" which is why BSB had a bit of a mish-mash of names!

There's an image I've taken on my phone of a rejected BBC1 and BBC2 ident that I'll have to upload. The BBC2 one is particularly awful!

And then they made the horrible mess that BBC News currently have

I forgot about Anglia in my last post. From what it said in the book, Anglia had a poor reputation with upmarket viewers which meant it was harder for them to attract the best advertisers. This prompted the redesign although the board at Anglia were reluctant to get rid of the horse and knight. LN did try to put the knight into new forms but they either wouldn't work on-screen or wouldn't work off-screen. They managed to persuade them to get that new logo, the flag aspect paying homage to the knight. The logo went through several colour changes. Something like green, pink and purple was considered at one point!

That's pretty well known isn't it? Although the animation was only really used on air during the first year or so


Are they the 'ONE' and 'TWO' logos with the globe in the O of 'ONE'?