[LDN]

Couldn’t disagree more. The News Now titles look like someone touching the screen and dragging to the left to refresh and just as they let go the BBC blocks animate. It really parallels the BBC News app look and I think that’s really clever.

Sorry to be the odd one out!

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In fact if people can’t see the above perhaps they’re not qualified to slag off other people’s design.

There seems to be an opinion that complicated equals good and simple equals bad. This is so wrong.

*sigh*

I much preferred the original version of your post, before you decided to edit it and add that unnecessarily p!ssy comment highlighted in bold. Still, if 'weirdly bitter snark' is the level of discourse we're going for here, I'll gladly come down to your level. 

As a matter of fact, the 'swipe to refresh' aspect of the design was not lost on me -- indeed, that's exactly what it reminded me of when I originally re-watched the titles a few times: someone touching the screen (the first 'pulse'), and then swiping left, although I certainly didn't notice the synchronisation with the BBC blocks dropping in (well spotted!).

What I couldn't work out, and which still makes no sense to me, is why this extremely basic visual representation of the swipe-to-refresh gesture, shown over an exceptionally blurry and barely recognisable background of a pres suite, would ever be used for the titles in a news programme. I reasoned that while the animation reminded me of a swipe-to-refresh action, that couldn't possibly be the BBC's actual design intent, because:

1. if the swipe-to-refresh gesture was the core of the idea, why would they use a sideways swipe in the title sequence? I can't think of a single example, anywhere, of swiping sideways to refresh, so why would they do that in these titles, potentially making it less obvious to viewers what it's supposed to represent?

and 
2. the concept itself, of a blandly animated mobile refresh gesture (turned sideways!) being used to represent a major global BBC News programme, struck me as very, very stupid -- so stupid, in fact, that I decided to avoid any mention of it in my earlier post for fear of being laughed at for even suggesting something so utterly, excruciatingly foolish. 

You claimed that the title sequence "really parallels the BBC News app look". Uhhh... does it? When I refresh the page in the app, I don't swipe sideways, and I don't get big red concentric circles appearing under my finger. When I pull down to refresh, the BBC blocks don't animate down from the top of the screen. So in practice, the only link to the BBC News app is the use of red, and the loose association with swiping to refresh, which exists in most mobile news apps, and isn't uniquely or distinctively 'BBC'. Really, the link between the titles and the BBC News app is pretty tenuous, and as a piece of BBC News branding, it's subjectively and objectively weak. 

You also said: "There seems to be an opinion that complicated equals good and simple equals bad. This is so wrong." Uhhh... what? Who said anything of the sort? As most people would tell you, complicated design is often poor, because less is often more. And simple design can also be very beautiful -- an uncontroversial statement that again I think most people would agree with, without much persuasion. 

But simple design can also be bad, and in my opinion, this is bad design.

Four flat circles briefly 'pulsing' and then quickly swiping sideways, with no connection at all to the BBC News brand, aside from the colour red. In my opinion, as a piece of branding, it's dreadful. It does little or nothing to connect with or enhance the existing brand identity -- which is limping on alongside all of these new title sequences -- and it does little or nothing to establish the elements of a strong new BBC News design language for the future. 

Oh, and by the way, dear: I've been a media and marketing professional for 22 years, including 8 years in brand identity design (!!) -- so despite your smug implications to the contrary, I'm actually feeling pretty f**king "qualified" to share my opinions on this subject. 🧐🤣🤣🤣