Honestly, I love them all. I've never had to choose, because I never had a region for a home. And I never grew up with one, even if I had been born in the UK, because by the time I was a little kid, ITV was one solid entity.
...but if I had to choose, I'd choose Associated-Rediffusion and it's Adastral (I hope I'm spelling that right). Come on, it's
the
ITV logo. People might have the Granada "Northern G" imprinted on their retinas, but for me, A-R's logo is beautiful. Not to say that the others are bad...
Allegedly I've read before that they had to display "Tyne Tees Television" at the bottom as they had to display the proper name of the franchise.
But I question this as many regions didn't display the name of the franchise, just various animated station logos such as Central's abstract textured cakes they were using around that time.
Surely that would have meant Central would have had to display "Central Independent Television"?
AFAIK the only time that name was acknowledged was during the authority announcement over the startup.
The fate of the Yorkshire version lends credence to the theory that YTTTV simply got cold feet about the entire rebrand.
:-(
A former member
Wasn't it suppose to be " your watching Channel 3 Yorkshire " Strange thing is it would need to strap line the bottom because the yorkshire bit would already be on screen.
The approach was inconsistent from the start how Yorkshire got to keep their symbol with the '3' as a secondary branding device whereas the '3' became the focal point for Tyne Tees with their symbol ditched in favour of text.
Presumably the chevron was deemed to be too valuable to ditch outright ?
Yet another highly subjective question from Maaixuew…
The Thames Television ident of buildings in London reflected in the river is truly iconic artwork and is clearly recognisable to almost anybody in the world that it's London even if they have never watched a single Thames programme. It's probably the best recognised and remembered ITV ident from the 1970s and 80s, apart from TV-AM and ITN, by people living outside the Thames region although this factor may be somewhat skewed by the dominance of Thames in networked programming.
Is it a coincidence that both the Central 'cake' and the early TVS 'trident' features a rainbow of colours or have the same design team been involved in both? I have discussed the design of these idents and whether they were acceptable designs in the 1980s but if a TV company used a rainbow of colours in their ident today then it will be viewed as a TV channel for gay people.
The TVS 'trident' is very abstract but is also highly distinguishable and would still be regarded as modern today. Was it's shape inspired by the logo for Atari? The later silver TVS 'trident' looked very snazzy and eye catching; even more so when paired with the theme tune by Ed Welch. Interestingly, the same style would have worked just as well with the Southern Television star.
Anglia had a minimalist (and dated?) styling in the mid 1980s by the standards of the time, especially when contrasted with the CGI stuff from Central, but was completely revamped in 1988 when the A composed of triangles was introduced. It's actually a mathematical puzzle – how many triangles do you see? A very distinguishable symbol and it's not hard to see why Anglia did not use the generic ITV ident in 1989.
For some reason I found the TSW ident to be attractive despite only occasionally venturing into its territory and rarely seeing any networked TSW programmes.
The TV-AM ident very clearly symbolised a breakfast TV channel although it has a very 1980s look and feel that might not have stood the test of time as well as other ITV idents from the era.
Carlton had a bland and unmemorable ident – both in general and when contrasted with Thames – that reflected its vague name and weak identity as a TV company although it owned half of the ITV network by the late 1990s.
The question wasn't about the idents - it's about the logo. hence why Granada is getting mentioned more than the likes of Central. Indeed perhaps the Granada logo is considered so strong because the idents were so simple.
Yet another highly subjective question from Maaixuew…
The Thames Television ident of buildings in London reflected in the river is truly iconic artwork and is clearly recognisable to almost anybody in the world that it's London even if they have never watched a single Thames programme.
It's a great ident, but outside of that it didn't work well as a logo (which is what this thread is about). No matter what they did, it looked poor when in print or on their slides and other graphics
Quote:
Is it a coincidence that both the Central 'cake' and the early TVS 'trident' features a rainbow of colours or have the same design team been involved in both? I have discussed the design of these idents and whether they were acceptable designs in the 1980s but if a TV company used a rainbow of colours in their ident today then it will be viewed as a TV channel for gay people.
I doubt it - Big Centre TV launched with one along the same lines. I think the multicolours was basically a rebellion against the predominantly blue and white logos and idents around at the time. Channel 4 dis the same the same year
Quote:
The TVS 'trident' is very abstract but is also highly distinguishable and would still be regarded as modern today. Was it's shape inspired by the logo for Atari?
It's based on a fleur de Lis, at least that's what I always assumed.
Quote:
Carlton had a bland and unmemorable ident – both in general and when contrasted with Thames – that reflected its vague name and weak identity as a TV company although it owned half of the ITV network by the late 1990s.
I don't think anyone could call their first idents 'bland'. They were bright, bold, original and totally different to anything seen before. They got a lot of coverage and comment at the time and spawned many spoofs and imitators.
The logo however, which is what this thread is about, was a bit bland yes. Though in its original form - morphing from 'London' it was quite clever, but that only got used for a few months
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 13 May 2016 8:45pm
