The BBC Chameleon Thread - Printable Version

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - AndrewP - 10-02-2024

(10-02-2024, 02:26 PM)ViridianFan Wrote:  It annoys me how when you open iplayer you get the animation but you don’t on any other of the apps.

I think there's a case supporting the News and Sounds app not having all the bells and whistles - these are available internationally and possibly they've done this so it runs smoothly on even the lowest end devices around the world.

Although I may be giving them more credit than they're worth

Agree with the comments about the logo - as timeless as Gill Sans is, MLN still modified the characters for the logo. It's a shame the same attention to detail wasn't afforded to the Reith logo...

I'm still not the biggest fan of the rebrand of Radio - especially Radio 3 and 4.
Their old logos perfectly conveyed the output of the stations, and the new neon colour schemes quite frankly look garish and cheap.
Compare the websites for PM and WATO. One looks thought out, whilst the other looks unfinished. I'll let you decide which one's which..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/pm 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/wato 

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - ViridianFan - 12-02-2024

Learnt something new there as I’d assumed there would be a uk version and international version as they used to have two versions for the website didn’t they? So international audiences have access the national radio station and the (not so) local stations too?

I thought they had modified the letters and they weren’t “pure” Gill Sans. Wish I could remember who I was talking to about that.

Then problem with bbc reith for the logos is I think it’s too thick in its normal weight. I think a semi-light would have looked better. Plus the letters are too small. I’ve noticed that in any application where the logo is small, you can loose the counters in the Bs (an issues with the 1980s slanted and coloured line logo and that the 1997 logo corrected. Because most of the channel names are no more then four letters they end up looking very chuncky and squashed. If you think back the channel logos when the colours boxes appeared the fonts were very think but they could larger as they didn’t look overly thick.

I couldn’t believe the PM website. It’s like they’d given up on it. We’ve also already got variation in logos with the world at one adding the clock hands and the gold underline “at”.

I have to say a lot of the colour schemes look very dull and almost dirty if that makes sense. They’re not very bright or eye catching. Think back to the textures and gradients they used on the bbc end boarders using the circles were much deeper and high quality

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - James2001 - 27-02-2024

Not entirely related, as it's related to the 1997 revamp, but Drama showed the first episode of series 12 of Casualty with the 1997 BBC logo at the end, even though that wasn't bought in until episode 5. Episodes 2 and 3 had the correct logo though (episode 4 isn't on till tomorrow).

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - Mike - 27-02-2024

(10-02-2024, 05:19 PM)AndrewP Wrote:  as timeless as Gill Sans is, MLN still modified the characters for the logo. It's a shame the same attention to detail wasn't afforded to the Reith logo...

(12-02-2024, 10:23 PM)ViridianFan Wrote:  I thought they had modified the letters and they weren’t “pure” Gill Sans. Wish I could remember who I was talking to about that.

Martin Lambie-Nairn, in 2019 Wrote:The Gill in the logo is Gill Sans Medium with a slight upping of the weight (a line) to make it reduce better and look more comfortable in the boxes.

I had a conversation with the man himself, after his then website had the sub-par recreation on it (it was promptly changed when I pointed it out to him).

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - Spencer - 27-02-2024

(27-02-2024, 03:48 PM)Mike Wrote:  I had a conversation with the man himself, after his then website had the sub-par recreation on it (it was promptly changed when I pointed it out to him).

I’m sure that dodgy version of the BBC logo came about in the ‘TV Logos’ font which did the rounds in the early days of TV Forum. I think it was also responsible for the crummy recreation of the YTV chevron which appears on things like Redbubble t-shirts and even Wikipedia…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yorkshire_Television.svg 

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - Mike - 27-02-2024

(27-02-2024, 08:22 PM)Spencer Wrote:  I’m sure that dodgy version of the BBC logo came about in the ‘TV Logos’ font which did the rounds in the early days of TV Forum. I think it was also responsible for the crummy recreation of the YTV chevron which appears on things like Redbubble t-shirts and even Wikipedia…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yorkshire_Television.svg 

Yes, I still to this day have a copy of it installed from whenever I first downloaded it (and it's survived god knows how many new PCs since), some of the logos are spot on but as you point out the YTV chevron, the BBC logo, the Central and Carlton logos are all slightly off. Close enough I'd imagine in the days of 800x600 displays and no real smoothing.

I still wonder how it became prominent across the BBC though, pretty much all BBC Birmingham network production started using it around 2006/7 time.

I must say though, the worst implementation of dodgy BBC logo goes to this:
https://tvark.org/north-west-tonight-1-6 

The first two blocks are fine, but the final one and the C glyph is not only the wrong weight, but also around 3 pixels too high.

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - JAS84 - 27-02-2024

(27-02-2024, 08:22 PM)Spencer Wrote:  I’m sure that dodgy version of the BBC logo came about in the ‘TV Logos’ font which did the rounds in the early days of TV Forum. I think it was also responsible for the crummy recreation of the YTV chevron which appears on things like Redbubble t-shirts and even Wikipedia…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yorkshire_Television.svg 

That Wikipedia file was uploaded by AxG, who's a member of this forum and it's predecessors.

And that TV Logos font is still online.
https://www.tvarchive.org.uk/TVA/?p=TVA/fonts.php 

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - VMPhil - 27-02-2024

(27-02-2024, 08:22 PM)Spencer Wrote:  I’m sure that dodgy version of the BBC logo came about in the ‘TV Logos’ font which did the rounds in the early days of TV Forum. I think it was also responsible for the crummy recreation of the YTV chevron which appears on things like Redbubble t-shirts and even Wikipedia…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yorkshire_Television.svg 

That's a good guess, but the dodgy Gill Sans logo came about from someone's homemade SVG version of the logo that was then uploaded to Wikipedia. Now, the current version is a lot closer to the proper logo, but if you look at the file history and look at the earliest uploads, you can see the culprit - the typeface is too thin and the C is too high up.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BBC_logo_(1997-2021).svg&dir=prev 

For reference, here it is on the start of a Nigel Slater programme from 2011: https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Philip/nigel-slaters-rubbish-logo.png 

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - ViridianFan - 27-02-2024

There was always a dodgy bbc logo when they have the red spiral end board whenever they promoted that weeks question time if I remember rightly. The logo on top of the pops also had a dodgy logo as it also broke the no colour rule (made yellow if I remember correctly & the blocks animated on and off)

How do the wrong logos get into circulation and make it to air? I always assumed there was some sort of shared file (or when the 1997 logo was introduced a CDrom) where they could access the logo.

It always surprises me they don’t have a person whose job it is to enforce the style guide.

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RE: The BBC Chameleon Thread - JAS84 - 27-02-2024

It would help if the style guide was up to date, instead of telling you to use the old Gill Sans logo when you're actually supposed to use the Reith one.

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