New BBC corporate font: BBC Reith

I think that's the point. The BBC's current (or is it now previous?) corporate typeface, Gill Sans, wasn't suitable for long form text, so it wasn't used, and the corporate brand was diluted a bit.



I think the point is that if you CAN have a corporate typeface that you can use on-screen, on-line, on-mobile etc. rather than needing to switch out to different typefaces for different outlets, you enhance your brand.

By owning your own typeface you both ensure a unique element of your brand AND avoid the nasty licensing gotchas that lots of other typefaces will incur. (As anyone who has had to try and deploy graphics across multiple outlets and platforms when a designer has 'found a nice typeface that's perfect' and designed a brand around it, only to discover it's heinously expensive to license will know...)

I really don't think they'll be using the same typeface for headings as well as the main body text.

They’re not changing the font of the blocks - it will stay as it is in Gill Sans.

It will be displaced as the main corporate typeface of the BBC by BBC Reith - the designers talked about the suitability of the font in long-form journalism and saving money from using other fonts.

So how long do we think it will take for it to appear on here and people start using it in mocks?

If they embed it was a webfont, 1 day from launch? I predict lots of orange,red and white rectangles with BBC Reith sans in them with names against a lime green background, to show that's where the presenters would be... Or BBC One mocks where 'one' is replaced with 'one' in Reith Sans

I don't see why not, unless you're implying they won't be that consistent!

Is anyone else wondering how much actual truth there is in all this "it's better for X, Y, and Z" and how much is just font industry marketing spiel?

Nothing wrong with Arial get off my lawn etc etc...

For BBC Reith, see Guardian font family of the Berliner era

If anything, looking at the font, its less about marketing and trying to define an image - and more about cost cutting. The font seems safe, and ordinary. The main channels may keep a distinctive brand font with Reith used for generic slides, news, sport, etc.

The BBC Sport website is now using BBC Reith as header and body text as of this morning.

A blog post about the changes.

As you may have guessed I'm not a fan of using the same font for the entire page. It looks incredibly bland. But…



There is a god.