Why just point out ITV's bad points?

Says it all really. People slagged off the Carlton hearts/stars idents at the time (mostly because they said Carlton, not Central or Westcountry or even Thames) but look now, they are held in high regard as some of the best idents ever produced!

Still never liked any of the Carlton idents or the hearts of ITV. Apart from the blocks (just because they are the best of a real bad buch - hearts, celebrities, blocks and NED1/2/3-eurostyle), the only ITV idents I liked were the Granada unicycle, Central Moon/cake, TVS, ATV double eye and Yorshire Chevron,

I liked the hearts/stars probabaly because HTV were the only "Carlton" region to still have their name!

I hated the celeb idents and I dont like the current idents much. The ones in between were good though.

I agree, but then again I don't like "live action" idents unless they are done well like BBC ONE or C4's current lot.

The celebs were awful.....and the current ITV1 idents are worse. Although ITV2 & 3 are good.

I always like the Carlton "star" ones, even though they removed the westcountry name.

Even at the time, I loved the Carlton star-within-a-star idents.

This'll make me unpopular, but I never liked the Central "cake" when I was growing up (I was born in Nov 1980), and still don't think much of it.

IMHO, Carlton's CGI hearts were so much better than the GMG/UN&M regions' film idents with objects and stuff becoming heart-shapes.

HTV were lucky to eventually get the Carlton-style beginning edited onto their idents. Especially when the GMG regions started abandoning the film openings, in favour of the boring "lines form-up" versions. That just made the Carlton hearts look even more superior than they already looked. So, HTV didn't get lumbered with the "lines form-up" era.

I actually find the HTV version more likable than the Carlton version! The whole heart flashing white, rather than just a small star-shaped area in the top-right, and it becoming the V of HTV was very aesthetically pleasing to me.

I also like the way that the rectangular box outline around the HTV logo formed up in different ways, depending on which particular "heart" opening animation it was. The fact that they bothered with such detail, considering that it would be un-noticed by average viewers, was impressive!

Banish him from the forums immediately!!!


As for the hearts, I always preffered the GMG live action versions actually.

Well, it'd be a dull world if we all liked the same things!

Funny thing is, I quite like the Central "moon" (as opposed to the later "cake", if you see what I mean), but specifically the multicoloured one, not the original one (just white, on blue background).

I really liked Carlton's hearts, although I didn't like the company (and ruined our Central... but I'm not going into detail). I believe they were made by Lambie-Nairn and I like most of their work.

We recieve Central, HTV Wales and Granada, but out of the lot Carlton's look of 1999 put the others to shame. I didn't think much of the HTV-Carlton hybrids because the endboard was always blue... unlike the Carlton ones which changed depending on the ident shown. On some things however (for example the Xmas idents; their sloppy "coming up" caption which still had the Carlton star in the animation) it always seemed Carlton stuff was lazily edited for HTV. Plus when HTV came to film the football in town, the vans were all re-labelled "Carlton" (and still are). The local HTV depo has some ITV Wales stickers over HTV signs, but recently some of those signs have mysteriously "dropped off".

Back on topic; has anyone noticed only recently the Carlton hearts and BBC1 Dancers have disappered off Lambie-Nairn's website? And did LN make the HTV edits aswell?

Weren't the BBC1 Dancers designed by Red Bee. I know the Carlton* stars and the BBC2 idents are made by Lambie Nairn but the Carlton idents were better than the cold ITV hearts. Thank lord LWT dropped them for a videowall.

BBC1 Dancers were Lambie-Nairn. They were on their site until recently.

Pity BBC One didn't go with Lambie-Nairn for the re-brand. I think the dancers were just a blip really, and was probably more down to the brief they were given. I've loved most of their work, and overall I haven't been overly impressed with Red Bee. The current batch may be better than the dancers, but nothing tops the balloon - and wait, that was Lambie-Nairn as well.

well iirc carlton 021(the old central facilities people, based in bham, now called 021 television) had/have(?) the contract for itv sport. so perhaps thats why carlton vans were present?