ITV1 ident package 2004/06

Mentioned very briefly in the "Happy Birthday Mr Bean" thread and I felt this deserved a separate thread.

Although, I don't remember these idents when they were shown on air, after watching countless "continuity" videos, I've grown quite the attachment to ITV1's identity from 2004/06.

What I love the most about these idents is the smooth transition from the menu (which would be showing what's coming up next that day or evening) to the channel's logo, it's so slick.

Not to mention how the squares of the ITV1 logo flies across the screen before reassembling back together.

Probably significantly better than what they replaced, which was the ITV celebrity package, which I really hated and I was glad to see the back of. However of course we were spoiled in Carlton land because of what had appeared on our screens before that 2002 package, so anything was going to look crap after that. This later package was better than the the 2002 look though.

The Carlton idents looked very nice as well, especially the Christmas and New Year idents, some of the Celebrity idents were very...cheesy to say the least.

But, the idents from 2004/06 seem very under-appreciated to me, considering what they were replaced with afterwards.

It's definitely an under appreciated package. I love how they integrated the menu into an ident in peak junctions, it looked quite slick.

Definitely one of my favourite TV presentation packages of my lifetime, and as said above, under appreciated.

They didn't exactly last long with those promo inserts and transitions, keeping it only for primetime after the initial few weeks. After only a few months they'd given up totally and just had a standard ident of the in front of clouds, ribbons etc.

Better than what came before with the grinning waxwork celebrities and after with that toothless kid and fat pensioner though certainly.

This is also the era of ITV DAY idents too.



ITV DAY Wales:


How long was ITV Day branding used? April 2005-sometime 2006?
Also what time slots was Day branding used? 9:25am junction till 5:30pm junction, then 6pm news (possibly no ident), then from 7pm back to ITV1 idents?

Heres UTV Day. Can't remember how long UTV bothered with em? Or frankly why they even bothered?

Did the regions get idents similar to ITV1 Wales with the regional name underneath. Always thought this concept would have been a good way to integrate the regional logos, just spinning the cube to reveal the Chevron for Yorkshire, the G for Granada etc.


I do think it was a brilliant set though and liked the menu idea, even if splitting the ITV logo felt like they'd somewhat taken what should have been a BBC concept for themselves. I also think the 4 square motif worked really well for ITV from 2002-2006 - a strong recogniseable logo without the need to brand it. Worked well adjusted for Scottish and Grampian too, though not so much for UTV.

ITV Day was just stupid. They'd spent three years trying to get everyone to call the channel ITV1, then introduce a brand for most of the day that doesn't use that name.

Indeed, they did:

I'm amazed how popular these are. I found them dull, to be frank. Yes, the celebrity idents were brash and cheesy but these went too far the other way. The surrounding pres was fairly neat but the "big square" main ident never appealed.

They should've kept the "four square" motive from the celebrity era and adapted that to something new. I also quite liked the generic non-celebrity ident that was used before the news.

Incidentally, I note from the current weekly uploads of Ministry of Mayhem that to introduce the show they were still using the 2003 generic/news ident (modified for CITV with explosion effects) well into 2005.