New BBC corporate font: BBC Reith

Hinting would be my first guess. Firstly you would design the character and style of the typeface for print use. Then you would add instructions called Hints, which tell the font renderers built into OSs, how to fit those characters into pixels on the screen. Then there is TV/On-Screen use. Whilst these could also count as pixels, the live character generators like VizRT etc, could have some quirks to how it puts stuff on the screen. Typically the rendering on these systems is optimised for speed and not accuracy, so tweaks to the glyphs may be needed to ensure they look good at various sizes, and when moving etc.

Ligatures may also be added over time, as well as new currency symbols. Also with BBC Global News in particular, they will need to ensure the Reith fonts gel well with the foreign language typefaces they use, in terms of character heights, x-heights, so when the languages are used together on screen, it does not look odd. I could imagine the BBC commissioning additional character sets for various world languages so you get BBC Reith Urdu, and BBC Reith Arabic - to further reduce licensing costs for other typefaces they currently use. These additions will take time and money to get right.

True as that is, they also devised the 1997 design kit with the future in mind; basically everyone was getting Gill whether they wanted it or not.
BBC Anything/
BBC RADIO ANYWHERE

The brand would come in the backgrounds/idents or other presentation elements.

Then everyone wanted their own thing and it slowly fell apart, and the issue is not everyone will be using Reith and it's not being used to replace logotype across the corporation. In some respects it must've been easier to tell all the nations, regions, channels, directorates, departments, radio stations that 'from X date you are to use a logo that conforms with this document'.

1997 was also a more confident and secure BBC, without a hostile government, press and "austerity" in place.

Very true, I can’t help but think this is part of the reason why BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 haven’t been rebranded for over decade (I don’t Oneness), compared to previously where they took place every 4 to 7 years. Any ident package or rebrand will cost money, but it’s spent to last. The BBC can justify not rebranding as it’s channels are still widely watched and well received.

I don’t mind the Reith font and serif version but the implementation has been poor considering ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the last few years have been rebranded in one go.

I think given the size and scale of the BBC and its diverse operations in this country and across the world, expecting an overnight rebrand like ITV or Channel 4 would be a tall order. However, I don’t think it would be unrealistic to have expected Reith to be rolled out over, say, a couple of months.

But it’s clear that the BBC’s brand is currently hugely fragmented with no clear overall direction. So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Reith’s implementation has been so sporadic and slow.

I think people are just giving the BBC excuses. It isn't like this was announced last week - it has been public knowledge for well over a year and would have been in the planning long before then, and frankly there is some serious inefficiency issues if they can't role it out in that time frame, especially when we're talking about just a font, not a (much needed) complete rebrand. In terms of TV content their portfolio isn't that much bigger than ITV or Sky, whilst with the website and apps you begin with news, sport and the iPlayer and go from there.

Radio is the biggest difference between them and other broadcasters but far less font heavy and shouldn't be delaying implementation across visual mediums.

You can now download Reith from our public-facing branding site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/branding). Note that for now use of Reith is only permitted if you have an existing relationship with the BBC. As for whether it will be fully open sourced...

Is being a licence fee payer considered an existing relationship?

It's nice of them to provide it officially. Nothing stopping anyone who wants it from downloading it though, and many people have already had it, unofficially, for months.

I did have a chuckle at this line from the BBC's branding page...



So where does #Oneness fit in with the last sentence?

Grab it, Mock Designs artists!



It looks like Doctor Who Magazine already started using Reith.

I've had it for months. Won't work in Word though, for some reason.