Does the BBC need a re-brand?

Third. 1998, 2006, 2013.

What possessed them to commission such a thing barely 1 year after a major rebrand I guess we'll never know. Belated regret?

Whatever the reason, the channel would be in a more presentable state had it just retained its Feb 07 set and look. And probably in a stronger position to justify an overhaul now.

So the 1989 logo doesn't count then?

as has been said, the bbc logo itself is pretty timeless. there are no fussy lines, quirky organic shapes or fonts which could make it look dated - if you think about it - the designer did a tremendous job because there are few modern logos in tv which stick around for long. i'm sure itv will change theirs again within 10 years because it *will* look very dated - and although the white blocks on screen do look a bit bland, that is more down to the limited imagination of the current presentation team - take a look at the glass blocks bbc films ident and how the blocks of the bbc logo were used like little lanterns a few years ago over christmas in promotions. there are many things you could do with it. they just choose not too.

I think the sad thing about bbc one in particular is that they didn't stick with the distinctive '1' numeric logo introduced in the 1990s with the '2'. like the '4' in channel 4 and '2' in bbc 2, it's really really, really easy way to build brand identity without filling the screen with text and logos, it can be done very simplistically.

in terms of on-air presentation, all the bbc stuff looks pretty ropey - like the jump before the credit squeeze and the ecp captions still don't seem to be lined up correctly (the spaces between each channel promotion isn't equal) and it's this lack of attention to detail which makes the output look a little grubby and less slick than it should be. even channel 5 manages to do it less clumsily.

but i agree with the original premise - all tv branding needs to be realigned and refocused, the current state where things have been tweaked organically now look a right mess. bbc 2 presentation is terrible. it's worse than i think i can ever remember it - even in the grey 'T W O' era.

Considering it was introduced BEFORE 1997 BBC, it shouldn't. I read it as the number of new logos since the Gill Sans BBC blocks.

Well that's how he was counting them, presumably.

My Granddad was still alive and I was 13 when both BBC One and BBC Two were last re-branded. I'm now 20 in August and my Grandfather has since passed on.

Arguably the 2004 tweak to the logo which saw the ITV logo split into BBC style blocks could be a fourth - ironically something which looked like it could have been more a development of the BBC logos.

There's nothing wrong with the BBC logo, it's a design classic which could do another 10 years at least. However I agree the idents need a refresh.

BBC One's circles looked fine when they came out & the circle was made up of objects (like kites, etc.) but the Christmas efforts & Africa efforts have been rather poor.

BBC Two, well it's a bit of a mess really, and needs a overhaul, there's still room for "Big 2" but it needs to be implemented better, we'll just have to wait & see what they do.

BBC Three, an odd one, I'll be honest I like the logo but never warmed to the idents, I much prefer the blobs.

BBC Four, I'll be honest I'm surprised they haven't been replaced sooner, surely this is now one of the longest running set of idents in modern television? They've been round so long that I forgot all about the previous set.

ITV have shown that you can refresh all channels at once successfully, surely the BBC could do the same in the near future?

At a cost of millions? Im sure that would go down well. Unless someone comes to their senses and does it all in house.

Yes, I feel this, although it would've been hard to accomodate it on the balloon idents. It's a shame, because BBC One had two symbols back then: the '1' and the globe and now doesn't have any really. The circle idea was a good way to try and recover the situation but I feel they may well be back to square one once they replace these idents.

To be honest though, I don't really dislike either BBC One or BBC Two's idents and in the world of many low quality channels, they're still some of the better idents on TV. I'm also worried about what they'd replace them with. Will BBC One keep the circle theme going in some form? Will BBC Two keep the 2 and not ditch it, like premature rumours suggested a year or so back?

And it's evolved, too. I'm not sure that the original designers conceived it would be used in 3D form, but it works quite nicely as three cubes.

http://irs1.4sqi.net/img/general/width960/20083058_O46NKHIyJRBViP7awuGsCZUGs8iaSe_hDQT2BzJTt7k.jpg