Does the BBC need a re-brand?

Unlike most on here, I would actually prefer to see BBC One's presentation remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. 2006 still feels incredibly recent to me, and the idents actually still seem quite new and fresh to me! On the other hand, BBC Two's slightly younger idents have worn much less well, partly because there were too few of them to begin with and the set was never added to, only taken away from, and the ham-fisted 'refresh' in 2009 didn't do it any favours - whatever possessed them to move the box to the right hand side when the idents were clearly designed to have it on the left?! BBC Three, BBC Four and CBBC all seem fine as they are.

So on the whole I'd like things to stay largely as they are (and I do think all the BBC channel idents are still far superior to the boring people idents that now infest three out of the four main ITV channels); but then again I do miss the uniform look that Lambie-Nairn brought in back in 1997, so if the BBC were to rebrand I wouldn't mind a return to that kind of scenario.

I think there were very strict usage guidelines originally - it had to be horizontal, be black or white and could only fade up and down, not zooming around the screen.

These were relaxed later, however, and some early usage didn't conform, such as the North West Tonight re-edit, where it animated in the same way as the previous logo.

I didn't think there'd be so much argument but lest there be any further confusion, that's exactly what I was referring to! Also to be noted that after that tweak the ITV logo was no longer necessarily always yellow-on-blue (which had heretofore been the case, except in monochrome print) and that it could also be seen in different colours.

To complicate matters even further (lest they need complications) the 2002 rebrand which saw a 3D-effect applied to the logo could also be deemed a change!

By contrast, the BBC logo has been exactly the same since 1997, and is nearly always (with some odd exceptions) either black-on-white or white-on-black.

And that's ITV's problem. When we were speculating in the weeks before the new logo was revealed, I argued that it needed precisely what the BBC (and Channel Four) has: a timeless logo. I think this has been core to why ITV has found it so hard to develop a decent identity since replacing the regions. The likes of the Yorkshire chevron and Granada G arrow were timeless in themselves and if ITV didn't consolodate, they'd most likely be on screen now, even if the particular idents were to change over the years. A look across the pond shows that most US networks have had broadly the same symbol for decades and so should the BBC's current one. It is timeless to me and it would be stupid to change it.

It's strange and a little irritating that the uniform look has broken up over the years.

Back in 1997, the BBC had extremely strict guidelines written for them by Lambie-Nairn on how to use the logo, and the font always had to be Gill Sans. Channel names were uppercase, regions In normal case, etc. Now, three of the four channels have their name in a different font. And whoever thought of putting logos in a box was an idiot. Beforehand it was centred, bold, large, neat and clear. And the channels looked like each other, which made the brand stronger in my opinion. Mind you, the 2s were always supposed to be the colour viridian in one way or another, and by the time the 2s got into 2000, they moved away from viridian as a uniform colour (although this wasn't terrible as it gave us great idents).

The logo itself is fine but both BBC1 and BBC2 need rebrands. I think cost plays a large part, hence why Christmas idents are re-used 3 times. There's this whole horrible concept that started in about 2001 of having this buzzwords to describe a package, i.e. boardroom nonsense, accompanied by an obligatory press release. Around the same time, people started appearing in idents. The second that happened, everything Lambie-Nairn strived to achieve fell apart. Now they're just bland and don't stand out, just like most channels these days. You need a strong symbol people will remember, like a balloon or the Central cake or LWT river or whatever. Not generic shots of everyday, slightly CGIed life. It's dull.

But I don't see it happening. BBC2 look set to abandon the 2 completely if Daniel Eatock and his weird concept makes it to screen, and BBC1 is anyone's guess.

The BBC Two idents had to have at least some blue/viridian in them but it didn't necessarily have to be the primary colour. The only two notable ones in the class of 2000 that didn't comply were Kebab and Predator, but I believe both were original intended to be special idents, which were exempt from the convention.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Daniel Eacock thing was just a pitch. Being over a year ago since I was aware of his work, nothing has changed on BBC Two, so that suggests to me that it's not happening.

Says here he won the pitch, but that was last year. Might be worth an email to the BBC themselves...

http://www.designweek.co.uk/home/blog/daniel-eatock-adds-one-and-one-together/3033571.article

I personally didn't think the brand was weakened at all come 2000, even though BBC2 was becoming more entertainment-based and the 2 became more of a character. But the idents were at their best on both channels for me around this time.

erm...

The story from Martin Lambie-Nairn goes that eventually the controllers wanted 'proper telly channel logos' (not ones that matched back-office departments next door) and if L-N weren't interested they would go elsewhere.

The boxes worked well as channel unifiers between 2002-6 (with similarly sensible guidelines); it fell apart when BBC One broke away in 2006, which should have been used as an opportunity to develop a new uniform style (even if just for cross-channel promotions). Instead, they decided to cack-handedly shoehorn BBC One back into the existing and now broken line.

This appeared to instigate increasing disparity between the channels again and a general decline in standards, leading to the mess of ideas on screen today.

I agree - the boxes generally made sense initially and were a way of easily differentiating between the channels in a form other than just text (I've always thought the balloon could and should have remained with the box on BBC1). It is only in recent years it has fallen apart with the BBC dropping it for it's own presentation but still having a boxed logo for cross channel promotion (and ECPs I think), while BBC2 kept it but it seemed to get in the way of the rest of their presentation, and even with them ditching it recently on the promos they still have a rather horrific version on their end boards. BBC News introducing a box of it's own at a time it seemed to be going out of favour with the rest of the output didn't help either.

Sorry, yes, meant to say it was the controllers themselves who were the idiots, not Lambie-Nairn.

But I disagree with the boxes - they just never really worked for me. The old logo was fine so why shift it to the left or right? Cross-promotion still worked perfectly well before. And they were still "proper" logos really. I think they just wanted to stamp their authority down.

At that time though they had the launch of BBC3, BBC4, CBBC and CBeebies to think about - and the basic text only logo just wasn't going to work for them.

You've missed an '0' off the end of the '5' there.

It's a classic logo now, like Coca-Cola, Boots and McDonald's.