Graphic Design Department at Yorkshire Television

I stumbled upon a bunch of images taken inside the graphics department at Yorkshire Television around 1987/1988. Fun to see all that old technology and how messy design studios were back then.


0128-001 Graham Smith & Paul Felgate at Yorkshire Television by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-002 Documentaries Graphic Design Office at Yorkshire Television by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-004 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Dave Hartley & Pat McCarthy) by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-008 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Paul Peppiate & Joyce Wilson) by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-010 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Ed Bailey) by Andy Davy, on Flickr

If they were anything like Central, they actually had much better equipment available to them but it was blocked by the unions since it meant fewer staff were required. Most of the equipment installed in Nottingham was state-of-the-art when the studio was built, but almost redundant by the time the unions actually allowed its use.

Nice find - and an Archimedes too! There's a similar pic of the design dept in the early 70s on the excellent Memories of YTV website - http://memoriesofytv.weebly.com/people.html

Oh wow, is that an early Acorn Archimedes in one of those shots? You tended to see them in schools mostly. But I had one at home. For the time, those machines really could do everything! I remember all sorts of peripherals from graphics tablets to microscopes being plugged into those.

Oh wow! Yeah that really was so fun!! Why do people bother with video games and playing with toys and go to the park when we have this much fun with these pictures!!!

Well that was unnecessary and stupid.

Fascinating pictures, thank you. Was the the graphics department for the whole of Yorkshire Television or just one part of it? I can't help but feel that there must have been much more variety and creativity in the job when you were working across a range of programmes than just one.

If you've got nothing better to contribute to the thread, don't.

I'm not sure if its been posted here before but there's a nice promo of their work on YouTube. I guess it was all used onscreen so interesting to see some animations that probably aren't elsewhere on the net. Amazing how far the technology had come in just a few short years.

Yep - one of the things that the BBC ensured with the BBC Micros (both the original and the Archimedes - some models of which were also BBC branded) was that they could be Genlocked (which meant they could be synced to a studio's timing reference and thus used as a graphics source or in-vision without problems)

The Archimedes (and later Risc PCs I think) were used for on-screen graphics on a number of UK shows - Mastermind and Who Wants to be a Millionaire for example. BBC Micros were used on Gardeners World as well as for in-vision displays in 80s Doctor Who (and both BBC Micros and Archimedes were used for CBBC idents)

The only other domestic micro that was as flexible was the Amiga ISTR.

Did Yorkshire TV make any stings or graphics like that for network or was it all just used locally or for their own productions?

Some of the stuff in that YouTube video has stood the test of time pretty well.

YTV even before 1989 ident, it seem YTV did like using the ITV brand..

At 2m35s STV used that promo but used scottish instead of itv.