TV Home Forum

Which ITV company from 1955 to 2002, had the best logo?

(May 2016)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
IS
Inspector Sands

Ah yes, Central with their gay cake... Rolling Eyes

Is that why Rod Hull lived in a pink windmill? Did the conspiracy run that deep? Very Happy
RI
Riaz
Is that why Rod Hull lived in a pink windmill? Did the conspiracy run that deep? Very Happy


This was a different era before the LGBT community in Britain 'hijacked' pink and the rainbow for their own promotion, and when gay meant happy rather than homosexual. Oh what a gay day!

I'm not sure if anybody here does graphic design but colour is a huge subject. A certain colour can be perceived by people from one cultural background in a very different way to that by people from another cultural background. Colours can also be perceived differently by societies in different eras.
DO
dosxuk
Riaz posted:
I'm not sure if anybody here does graphic design but colour is a huge subject. A certain colour can be perceived by people from one cultural background in a very different way to that by people from another cultural background. Colours can also be perceived differently by societies in different eras.


And some even think pink can't be used as the branding colour for a mainstream tv channel!
BA
bilky asko

Ah yes, Central with their gay cake... Rolling Eyes

Is that why Rod Hull lived in a pink windmill? Did the conspiracy run that deep? Very Happy

Have you ever read Eric Bristow's thoughts on Rod Hull...?
LS
Lou Scannon
My favourite is probably Meridian's sun/moon/face thingumy.

Before they came along, I'd say Anglia's "A". As has already been noted...

Riaz posted:
It's actually a mathematical puzzle – how many triangles do you see?


Smile
IS
Inspector Sands

Have you ever read Eric Bristow's thoughts on Rod Hull...?

I hadn't until just now and the same thought had occurred to me in the past
WH
Whataday Founding member
My favourite is probably Meridian's sun/moon/face thingumy.


It's very striking but actually a pretty poor logo design-wise. The centre of the logo is not the centre of the face so it could look a bit awkwardly placed.
IT
IndigoTucker
Central's Cake in my opinion, as it allowed a virtually unlimited combination of how it could animate and be formed onscreen.

BTW, here is an early trademark of it. Its a globe, with longitude and latitude lines coloured in.
http://i64.tinypic.com/2mgr3gz.jpg
GL
Gluben
It's very difficult to choose a favourite.

I live in the Anglia region and enjoyed the "A" flag symbol, but I remember visiting my grandparents in Loughton in the mid-1990s and seeing the LWT river with the redone David Dundas theme come thrashing its way into view. That and the Thames skyline are obviously instantly memorable.

Central's cake is similarly great, especially with the sheer number of variations it had. The Yorkshire "Y" (or "V") chevron was iconic yet for some reason always made me think of motorway services.

I really can't choose a favourite now since many of them stand out so much: STV's thistle; Border's symbol (which to me looked like someone had been stabbed in the eye with a pair of chopsticks); Granada's G-arrow; Tyne Tees TTTV...all great logos/idents.
CY
cyberdude
Central's cake is similarly great, especially with the sheer number of variations it had. The Yorkshire "Y" (or "V") chevron was iconic yet for some reason always made me think of motorway services.

And yet I still have memories of staring at the Granada logo while sitting on a wall drinking Ribena at Tamworth services when I was 2 or 3.

As for my favourite ITV logo? Thames was legendary, even if the skyline scared me a bit. YTV looked awesome, with their idents and that awesome 1982 -1988 startup music (Chris Gunning's 'Yorkshire Theme'). Central took the cake (get it?) with their branding, which always looked awesome. HTV's aerial was an innovative, if slightly dull, design but the best one for me is tied between TVS and TSW. The initial TVS theme ruled. TSW, on the other hand, put a lot of work into their branding for such a small company.

And now... I give you that YTV theme I talked about earlier.
Last edited by cyberdude on 18 May 2016 3:59pm - 2 times in total
HC
Hatton Cross
Being from the Central region, I was always fascinated just how many variants there were with the 'cake'.
Glass, steel, wood, water, plastic, cgi ect. Brilliant idea, given how cluncky the original globe logo looked, and how unworkable or unadaptable for it to do anything else.
The only thing that let the cake idents down was the music. Repetitions on a theme, and seemingly played on one Yamaha keyboard, then screwed up to an inch of its life in multi-track post prod.

Now, if they got Mike Moran and his band (that did the original wow wooow woowww der der der dum logo sting) to do a multi cut real instruments package three times every year, they really would have been good.

Probably, my favourite. Although 'River 2' from LWT was great, because it was almost like a quality trademark, you were going to find this show entertaining - and the real orchestration of the ident tune, rattled the speaker on your tv if you turned it up to loud!
WH
Whataday Founding member
But we are meant to be talking about logos rather than idents?

Newer posts