The Sky Presentation Thread

Just remembered the old Sky Symphony from 92. What a great piece of music and branding this was.

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/dsplus/m.php?p=sky_symphony1993.rm

Not sure anything they've done in the last 5 years has come close.

They did a couple of more Symphonys, one in 1995 and 1996, although they weren't promoted as much as the 1993, they were always used during the downtime of some Sky channels...

Sky 2 Start-up, including a bit of the Symphony

I did record the whole lot once when Sky Sports 2 was off the air, but silly me at the time taped over it!

Although they'll never return to those days, the 1998 look on all Sky channels was superb, they all had an individual identity that worked well.

I pray they don't use large, solid colour dogs, but they will, knowing them.

Thanks Gavin.

They've only been Sky 1 & Sky 2 once in their history before - between 1996 and 1997 (the Mk II "tombstone" look).

This is the first time the Sky corporate logo has featured in a Sky One logo since 1998 - for the last ten years Sky has had a "channels" logo which its used (the first one was a nondescript "SKY", the second one, introduced on Sky News in October 2001, is basically an uppercase version of the Sky corporate logo).

Wierd that it doesn't seem to be in the idents - most un-Sky! Throughout the 1990s the "Sky" logo was always the primary brand with the channel idents (which from 1993-1997 tended to all look much the same bar the main colour used and the Sky Synphony arrangement) being built around the Sky brand.

When they renamed Artsworld to Sky Arts, they did go with the standard lowercase corporate logo rather than the uppercase 'channels' logo. Now they're going to use the corporate logo on Sky One/Two/Three it looks like they are going to go back to only having one logo at a time (a process allready started some years ago when the most recent corporate logo started using the same font as the 'channels' logo).

I imagine the idea of having separate logos for their channels and platform sides was invented in 1998 when it looked on the cards that Sky would be forced to split the two up. Being that that never happened (and now looks unlikely to ever happen), I suppose it makes sense that they will ditch this idea and just use the one brand again.

When/if the current 'channels' logo is finally retired alltogether, it will go on to become Sky's longest running logo (and indeed probably the longest running of any broadcaster in recent years), being just about to notch up 7 years (and atm still counting) of use.

This thread's had me browsing through YouTube now, and I've come across an ident that almost brought tears to me eyes seeing it again, possibly the most beautiful ident of all time, and certainly the best Sky ever did.

The 1998 Sky Premier ident > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1bs89c0zTA

What the problem at Sky is, is that using the Premier example from above... they can create some really impressive idents, but they are ruined by the rather poor standard of logo's. Other than their glass sky logo branding, they've never seemed to grasp how to make a professional looking identity.

Sky One has started airing a promotion for the rebrand, complete with new logo and the shards element we've seen in the ident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltESOtMqG_k

You should see the Star Wars version of it. Superb blend.

Also showing on Sky News. Seen it a couple of times this morning.

I actually quite like the new logo - it looks quite distinctive and bold... although anything would have been an improvement on the current 'Sky Onc' logo.

Interesting though that the Sky channels are increasingly using the lower-case 'sky' logo in the corporate style, rather than the upper-case 'SKY' channels logo. Clearly though there's no concensus given Sky's recent revamp with the capitals logo. Seems a bit strange.

I wonder if it will spread to Sky News and Sky Sports? I can't imagine it working so well. In my opinion the uppercase SKY logo worked better for channel logos, as it's a lot easier to fit with other words than the corporate Sky logo, which is a difficult shape.