[madmusician]

I think that the lens idents are really great and, as said above, really suit BBC One. It's just brilliant to see some production values in idents again on this channel after the past five years! I never got around to posting this on TVLF, around a huge amount of negativity on launch night, negativity that I felt was quite unfair. The idents have a good concept and a symbol (the lens), are broad (and, dare I say it, inoffensive) enough to cover BBC One's output (that's not meant to be damning with faint praise, I see it as a real strength), and have a visual identity (seeing the field, seeing the gym, seeing the cafe) that makes people think 'this is BBC One and a programme is about to start).

I also feel that the initial response to the ident set was badly let down by not launching the idents in October 2021 with the rest of the Chameleon pres. If the idents had launched as planned (and with the icons, too), then we'd all have been praising the continuity across BBC TV junctions, the new animated blocks, the new end boards and the use of the lens throughout the package. But we'd already got used to all of that and the idents themselves thus seemed a little underwhelming, compared to how they'd have felt had they launched with the rest of the package.

We already argued this to death on TVLF, and the last thing I want to do on here is to get that criticism going again, or anger any insiders because I understand why this *couldn't* happen, but I still believe that it would have been so much better for the whole Chameleon look (as we have it today) to have launched together in October - with the icons being used straight away (both on screen and coming down in app updates within a week or so of the TV launch), the new BBC One idents being used and the new logo making it into the News graphics and so on. It's all seemed (for us who track it all, at least) a lot weaker, I think, for that launch being spread out. Imagine what we have now being launched together on one day - I think the whole thing is such a strong package and it's a shame that it's kind of trickled down so that we've never had the 'wow' factor of it all launching together and seeming really impressive.

One final comment from me on this package (and you can probably tell that these thoughts have been gestating for a while - since we saw the Chameleon stuff via that survey last summer, through the press launch and the October launch and then the idents coming on stream since April) is that it is so much of what we have wanted: strong symbols (the lens on One - and, let's be honest, this is the closest thing we'll have to the globe coming back - the curve on Two, the hands on Three and the rectangle-with-windows on Four), a real connection across junctions and across the BBC's offerings, and a bit of swagger in the visual language. I really, really like it all - I just wish it could have swept on screen together in a blaze of glory rather than the staggered launch. Mind you, now we're there now, I think that it looks fab!