ITV Pres

I suppose September is going to be when we get a refresh of the new look. I could spend all day saying what's wrong with it but here we go.

There are too many types of trailer. The BBC and Channel 4 have one, generic trailer and this works well.
The ITV logo needs to be horizontal or stacked. They need to make their minds up.
The ECP is still not incredible, and needs a rethink.
They need to ditch the generic backgrounds for credits and let programmes keep their originality. The actual credit style can remain, however.
A specially designed font would also be a good move. ITV can learn a thing or two from Channel 4.]

Anyone care to differ/add anything?

I agree with you on most points, though not about the logo. I think the fact that the logo is able to change is nice and ITV aren't the inly compnay doing this (having two logos, one vertical, and one horizontal). I would also like to see each show have it's own background in the credits. And for live TV shows we could just have shots of the studio whilst the credits are still going, like Ant and Decs Saturday Night takeaway. Emmerdale and The Royal have their own background, so I think all shows should, especially Coronation Street. And then Drama premieres could have a plain black background.

EDIT: Just remembered. It would also be nice if ITV1 had three types of trailers. One where we see a dramatic scene from a soap or a drama series and then the ITV1 logo forms in the bottom left hand corner and above the programme name and the day/time , followed by the announcer saying NAME OF SHOW, DAY AND TIME, ON ITV1. A second trailer could be for New Series and Drama premieres, showing different clips and background music, followed by a picture or clip of some sort with the name of the show, time and day, and the ITV1 logo, and the announcer giving the name. The final one could be for promos, for upcoming storylines for soaps or teasers for new programmes, after the teaser, the programme logo, in the centre, below it a coming soon or something like that, and below that the ITV1 logo, and then the announcer speaks. There. Very long winded and absurd but that's what I think anyway.

I personally find ITV1's current presentation really cheap and tacky. Even the execution of the awful celeb idents was better. It's just the way it seems to me there was no thought put into any aspect of this set. Basically all they've done is thrown some spinning squares over a crappy boring clouds/non-descript texture for the idents, and played around a bit with blurring effects for the break bumpers. The ECP always looks to me as if it's unfinished - as if some kind of texture or animation was meant to be in the background replacing that horrible VCR-blue-screen colour they use for the background. The font is just dull and terribly 90s/American (which was maybe the type of look they were going towards...). It just all looks really amateurish.

I completely agree.

Benjy are you a mocker? If so, do you think we could see some designs from you?

I've been looking through a November 2002 tape, and even though I was never a fan of ECPs or the Celebrities, it really looked quite good. The ECP featured a 'Coming Soon' on the left, with a 'Next' on the right. It looked much better than the current ECP. The Celebrities although not that good visually had good audio. And the movie slides (animated, based on Movie Premiere sting) look much better than the plain old clouds.
The standard programme slides were quite good as well (I particularly liked the Sunset/Sunrise version).

Now we have these idents, without any imagination whatsoever. The music is dull, the programme slides are all based on clouds, the idents are used at the wrong times of day (clouds into the 10.30 news?), trailers looking poor - again the menu trailer used for Saturday night is only clouds - poor. The next menu and ident menus look washed out and very daytime like - despite the main use being in the evening. The music, as I've said, is bad, but particularly in the evening/night, when I'd expect something with a bit more umph to it. The best example of a good ident for this time is the music for "Ident Peaktime" from the 2002 package. Sadly that was rarely used.

The announcing is also going downhill - while Channel 4 are one of the best, ITV are the worst network for continuity. I particularly hate the way one of the female announcers says "Morning! It's ITV1" or "Next on 1" - while I'd expect something more along the lines of "Good Morning and Welcome to ITV1" and "Coming Up after the Break" or "Well next on ITV1 it's [Programme], but first we take a break".

If you think about it, Channel 4 is so precise about everything, it's really thought out. They even have rules about how to display Programme information, eg it ALWAYS must be Day Name/Day Number/Month/Time:

Shameless
Begins Tuesday 13 January 9.00pm

They have rules about the logo always being on the centre-right etc. It's things like that, which make it brilliant branding. ITV puts no thought, no precision and no guidelines in place with their branding, and as a result it's sloppy and bad, just like it's website, and everything to do with it.

You may disagree about the logo being different but come on, there are so many variations now it's ridiculous:

http://www.itv.com/masthead/images_mast/mast_1a.gif
http://parkinson.tangozebra.com/images/itv1_logo.jpg
http://www.itv.com/uploads/images/1097676200906_0.43342511789442023.jpg
http://www.freeview.co.uk/images/logos/logo_itvnews.gif
http://www.itvplc.com/itv/images/visit2.gif
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/image1_copy1.jpg

The only thing linking those logos is a font. It's sloppy, messy, ridiculous.

Some on here could make a whole new identity for ITV and it would look a damn site better than this.

IMO BBC One is just as bad, if not worse. I was looking through a tape the other day featuring a Saturday night trail from a couple of years ago ending with the red circles making up the '1' design (I think there was some speculation on here of that being the forthcoming design for the channel...!) and it just looked like a lot more thought had been put into it, with a bit of uniqueness. Now, all the trail endboards are exactly the same. Going back even further, with lots of different bright endboards. It just looks so plain these days!

I agree about the idents though - there's no spark or anything about them. The branding people need to be sat down in a darkened room and be shown the 1999 Carlton idents on loop.

Talking of the stacked / horizontal logo - I've noticed lately that the stacked logo is being used alot more - especially on trailers with no generic-endboard.

Agree about the credits though - but many could just use a black screen instead, which wouldn't be an improvement.

The ECP needs to look alot better - the layout isn't too bad, just the plain background could do with changing.

Have you not thought that the font used is the logo, rather than the layout of the boxes.

I just mocked up some logos:

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/logos.jpg

Now they aren't incredible but you can see what I mean. I made some promo ideas and ECPs. I'll post them on the mocks forum in a moment.

It just seems ITV cannot be arsed to put effort into anything but their advertising revenues.

Isn't it the other way around? They use the stacked on the main endboards, and especially for programmes this week they've been using the strip version. ITV2 seem to be using the stacked version more too.



I don't understand why the background is plain. They could have at least added the various backgrounds to them or at least a gradient.

I don't like how the ECP's on ITV2 & 3 are also this horrible blue, ITV2's was fine as it was on the black background, and ITV3's would look nice with the wire cube on the gradient.

As for the ITV logos all are different, and I've never understood them. At least with the BBC's all of there channel logos are within a box, and the BBC logo always stays the same.

Though I suppose Channel 4's company logos will be in more of a state than ITV's, especially when More 4 launches. Channel 4's, E4's and Film Fours are already completely different to each other.

The stacked logo is being used more.

Quite a few promos are using it now.