Inspiration for the early 2000's BBC channel rebranding?

So, Russty Russ, a Twitter user who regularly archives TV listings from yesteryear has recently been uploading the Radio Times listings for the week of October 17th-23rd, 1998, nearly two years before the stacked BBC logos became introduced starting with BBC World in 2000, then BBC Two in November 2001, Four and One in the Spring of 2002.



When you look at the BBC One and Two listings, you can see they largely resemble the stacked logos designed by Lambie-Narin a couple of years later, except the BBC One logo contains orange patterns from the balloon used in the idents at the time, and the BBC Two logo of course is against a viridian background, as opposed to the purple used in the "Personality 2's" era.

Well RadioTimes definitely predicted the near colour of the BBC Two logo in 2007.

I do remember seeing something about that stacked BBC One logo though during the balloon era as part of a poster or something... Maybe that's where the shot is from.

There were always stacked versions of BBC channel/brand logos available from 1997, it's just they weren't used much with the 'stripped' horizontal versions favoured instead. The Radio Times was still a BBC publication back then so would have had access to the official logos.

I'm now having a thought about what the BBC One 1997 ident would look like if they went with the logo from the Radio Times.

It would look like the normal ident but with the logo in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Looking up a copy of the 1997 guidelines, here's what it says about stacked logos:






Later on, one of the channel controllers complained that they didn't feel they had a 'proper logo' compared to other broadcasters, so the Lambie-Nairn compromise was the coloured box logos introduced in 2001/2002.



It may have been the posters seen in this photo:

Always felt when the box logos were introduced on screen that is exactly all they needed to do for BBC1 - retain the balloon idents but with the red box bottom left.

I always felt it was much more logical to place the channel logo bottom centre, as was done in 1997 - then it's consistent regardless of which aspect ratio you're watching in. One of the things that annoyed me about the 2001/02 rebrands was that although they decided to place the channel boxes in one of the bottom corners, they had to remain within the 4:3 safe area, so weren't actually in the corner at all, but rather drifting about some distance from the edge of the picture, which just looked untidy. Thankfully, we've now reached the stage where the logos are placed centrally again.

Is there a chance a PDF copy of the guidelines can be obtained through download?

Totally agree. It was clear that the 1997 rebrand on TV was designed to look good no matter what aspect ratio you were watching in, with not just the logos, but also all text such as on programme menus, trailer endboards, etc. all centred.

I was also never a fan of the 4:3-safe positioning of the boxed logos.

Guess that has to be the same person who thought the globe wasn't inclusive enough.

Unfortunately not, that image is something I cropped from a larger image of a scan I found on the MHP PP, taken from one of the pages of a document sent to newspapers and TV listing magazines so they could reproduce the new logos accurately.

There was a page on the old TV & Radio Bits site that explored this idea. As you implied though, quite unlikely given that the person who wanted the balloons axed may have been the same person who wanted the box logos introduced!


It used to annoy me that BBC One had its box on the left hand side, and Two/Three/Four had it on the right. I thought maybe One and Three would have it on the left and Two and Four on the right, but One ended up being the outlier.