ITV rebrands with completely new logo and look

[Jess 1110]

As BBC World News unveiled its state of the art studios in London, ITV underwent its own significant rebrand. The flagship channel, ITV1, has been renamed simply "ITV", and a new logo is being unveiled across all services. This puts an end to the awful generic logo from 2006, and the painful ITV1 "yellow" branding. This one's not generic - though I don't think they fixed the "awful" part:

 

 

Yes, it's an eyesore, but don't worry - if you're watching the flagship channel, you won't even notice. The new idents for ITV(1) use a technique called "colour-picking" that

I'm going to focus on the news branding, but if you're interested

, and here are links to

,

,

, and

.

 

The news is the one area where the branding has dramatically improved. Unfortunately, it's not hard to improve on what they had, which really had to be one of the

of all time. Thankfully, they hired branding geniuses Lambie-Nairn, who created the absolutely flawless BBC News look of 1999, as well as their lesser rebrand of 2008 and a bunch of other cool identities. This is the result:

 

 

While yes, they're using a virtual set for something that really could have been built easily, this is a nice look. The titles are sharp and clean, the graphics aren't intrusive, and the music (another Dave Hewson remix of the old "News at Ten" theme) is really, reallllllly good. It's really the first decent package they've had since the original

 

The regions (what's left of them, anyway) also get the rebrand. This means they get the new titles and - yes! - new music at long last!! Wow, so maybe they actually got new sets, and didn't just retouch the ugly, ancient ones with new backlighting and fake wood textures on the flooring...

 

 

...AUUUUUUUUUGGGHHHH.

 

In fairness, London managed to get a new set - a virtual replica of the national one, since they're produced by the national news team. Still...

 

(and yes, I know the video is sort of muted in the "construction" montage. Having a Will-I-Am song play during that makes one do that.)

 

Overall, they managed to sort of make the awful logo work, and this is not a bad news look overall. It's just... I really miss it when they all had names, and awesome individual theme songs, and amazing idents with amazing music. Like the

Those are still some of my favorite pieces of presentation ever.

[Samantha 2878]

What's old is new again?

 

Wow, it's sorta sad to see what ITV is like these days. An Anglia News teaser worked its way into a recent part of the NewsActive3 collection which has very little British material. Meh, I guess Australian aggregation, relaxed media ownership in the US, and ITV plc go hand in hand in hand.

[skbl17 188]

What's old is new again?

 

Wow, it's sorta sad to see what ITV is like these days. An Anglia News teaser worked its way into a recent part of the NewsActive3 collection which has very little British material. Meh, I guess Australian aggregation, relaxed media ownership in the US, and ITV plc go hand in hand in hand.

It all started when the Broadcasting Act 1990 was passed, the IBA was abolished, and Thames lost its franchise....

 

While I loathe ITV's treatment of the regions ("ITV [insert region name]" instead of "Carlton", "Tyne Tees", etc.) over the past decade, this look is stunning, and miles kilometers from that yellow trainwreck of 2006. Plus, the music is AMAZING!

 

All I can say is...can Lambie-Nairn do some graphics work here in the US? It would be beautiful. :drool:

[Viakenny 4]

And here's the new virtual set for ITV News London (formerly London Tonight):

 

Also, the ITV News at 1:30 comes from the same set as ITV News London (notice the desk), but with the national "control room" backdrop:

 

(sorry, can't embed YouTube video. could anyone help me? fixed it. thanks, 24994J.)

[24994J 5276]

And here's the new virtual set for ITV News London (formerly London Tonight):

 

[yt]HfUInLeFMl0[/yt]

 

Also, the ITV News at 1:30 comes from the same set as ITV News London (notice the desk), but with the national "control room" backdrop:

 

[yt]eEGOJT3G_y4[/yt]

 

(sorry, can't embed YouTube video. could anyone help me?)

 

And here's the new virtual set for ITV News London (formerly London Tonight):

 

[yt]HfUInLeFMl0[/yt]

 

Also, the ITV News at 1:30 comes from the same set as ITV News London (notice the desk), but with the national "control room" backdrop:

 

[yt]eEGOJT3G_y4[/yt]

 

(sorry, can't embed YouTube video. could anyone help me?)

Just copy/paste the link...it should embed automatically.

[Action Newsroom 1150]

I was reading some of the comments on the "worst news branding packages" video, and it surprised me. There are actually people who like the last package and hate this one. I guess the "Great" British public isn't ready for change.

 

By the way, based on my thoughts on the new package, I think it looks great. The network package proper is wonderful. Using real people doing real things is a great idea for an ident, even though is used to the brim on BBC One. And without special effects make them look even more real. And the "color-picking" technique is, is to me, genius. If don't like the logo, but still want to watch ITV, they won't have trouble looking at the logo because of the technique. The other ITV idents or awesome. 2 looks hilarious, 3 looks riveting, and 4 blows them all out of the water.

 

The news package looks better than the "yellow" one. Blue suits them better, and the set looks more like a real studio set, unlike the "yellow", which looks like a freaking computer game with lights. And the music is amazing, yet authoritive. Sounds like th last theme, but still different.

 

All in all, I like the new ITV look and would definately give it a chance. It gets my vote of confidence.

[bixpchiphead 105]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_2Jbo7fBA

 

 

A timing snafu allows us a gift of the full close (from tonight's itv NEWS)

[mre29 1340]

I like the network package, too, though I enjoyed the yellow-era idents, mainly because of how they worked the color into the scenes without beating the viewer over the head with it. But I love UK channels' idents in general, probably because there's not really anything like them on this side of the pond.

 

The new look for the news programs is pretty good, and I'll agree that it's an improvement over the "yellow" graphics. Here in the States, using the amount of yellow those graphics had would make one associate the program with Sprint or National Geographic, which I doubt would be the intended effect.

 

Alas, the whole thing is ruined by the use of a virtual set. I get that the idea of those things is to make news sets look ridiculously spacious without having to spend money on a proper set, but to my eyes, they always look "off" to me, not to mention way too sterile. I imagine a lot of US viewers would feel the same way, too; in fact, I can't think of any US TV news operations (broadcast or cable) that use virtual sets.

[C Block 1488]

You have to admit though, they did a pretty good job at making the virtual set look realistic, even if it would look gorgeous if it were real. And I second the motion to bring Lambie Nairn to the U.S.!

[Jess 1110]

The new look for the news programs is pretty good, and I'll agree that it's an improvement over the "yellow" graphics. Here in the States, using the amount of yellow those graphics had would make one associate the program with Sprint or National Geographic, which I doubt would be the intended effect.

Actually, the effect would be what I had upon seeing those graphics - "yellow journalism". Whatever heft ITV News might have had, the amount of yellow instantly branded the program as over the top tabloid. Yes, that might be a stretch, but note that yellow is never used as a main color in news presentation. In fact, if my memory serves, when they decided to extend ABC's yellow-and-black branding to the news division, yellow was immediately nixed because of this reason.

Alas, the whole thing is ruined by the use of a virtual set. I get that the idea of those things is to make news sets look ridiculously spacious without having to spend money on a proper set, but to my eyes, they always look "off" to me, not to mention way too sterile.

You have to admit though, they did a pretty good job at making the virtual set look realistic, even if it would look gorgeous if it were real.

I think Charles nailed why this particular one bugs me. This could have been a real set very easily, and a gorgeous one at that. I know this is cheaper, but it can't cost THAT much to put in a couple of rear projection screens and a couple of columns to stick the plasmas on.

 

Instead, it's a virtual replica of a real set, and it's incredibly off-putting to me. Keep in mind, I like virtual sets, and there have been some very good ones, including some of ITV's previous stuff. But those worked, I think, because they weren't trying to emulate a real set. You couldn't do that type of look in real life. This, you can. I'm reasonably sure that it's some variant of the Uncanny Valley at work here.

 

As for bringing Lambie-Nairn to the US, they've done plenty of work for US clients in fact. They were behind the current Weather Channel logo, for instance (though TWC screwed up the overall branding I think), and the brilliant Sci Fi branding before "Syfy". They're the type of agency that deals with bigger clients and brands than the stuff we'd like to see them work on. They're like Troika in a way - I am pining for the day that some station group just calls Troika and says, "hey, your stuff is extremely awesome almost every time, please brand our television stations please".

 

And not everything they've done has worked. They were behind the legendary 1991 BBC 2s and the beloved BBC One balloon, but also the lesser 2001 "robot" BBC 2s and the much-loathed BBC One dancers.