Favourite Ident

Actually, people will probably kill me , when I say...

I was really glad to see the back of the "cake" in September 1999. I felt that - even with all the textured/single colour (etc) variants used in late 1990s (see http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/itvmidlands/centralmain.html towards bottom of page), it was boring and outdated.

Even though the Carlton-ised CENTRAL logo was essentially just a plain word, I still thought it was an improvement on the "cake". The "personalities" of the individual letters (e.g. the laughing C, or the transmitter A) were more interesting than the "cake" could ever be!!!

The Sky 1993 idents were amazing, as were the BBC One Balloon and the 1991 2's. I'd also have to say that the HTV Aerial, ATV Zoom and Central Cake ranks highly as well.

Although in their last incarnation the Central cake/globe idents had incredibly cheesy music and had become slightly dated, the globe itself could have been updated easily. It was extremely flexible.
As an example, look at the title sequence below:
www.tv-ark.org.uk/itvmidlands/itvmidlands/news/centralnewswest071997.rm

I think that if the globe logo had remained, the brand would have been so strong that it could have been used without lettering underneath:
Perhaps as a 3d translucent shape animating over scenes of the midlands, or maybe animated using simple, bold graphics styled in a similar way to road signs or in-flight safety magazines......

My tuppenceworth:

1. Carlton 1999 drama ident (with the opening eye). It does with it says on the tin - it's dramatic;

2. Meridian 1997 - simple but effective;

3. Sky News' idents in 1996 and 1997 - so OTT (especially by '97) but yet so authoritative you can't help but love them.

I'm sure at one point in the late 80s they did have a few idents without anything lettering under the logo. They also had a few with their slogan "The One To Watch" in a nasty script font for a while.

The 1994 chevron was good, but it was just a flat version of the logo, so I didn't like it, the 1996 one was fantastic, although it was an odd 3d version of the chevron as one side of the logo had shiny bevelled edges and the other side didn't

Here's one from my own site, what do you think of the chevron?

http://www.cooltempest.co.uk/harshymocks/images/ytvliquidgold2.jpg

The Carltonised Central idents were the best that region had, another good set were the scottish idents from 2000, that oil rig one sticks out in my mind in particular.

I have to disagree. Those Scottish and Grampian ones with the square were only good because of the soundtrack. They should have never got rid of the thistle and saltire.

There are SO many to mention that I will only state my CURRENT favourite idents!

All the current regional ITV1 idents for ITV Wales, ITV West, ITV Westcountry and ITV Central are great!

They all show a local scene from a beach, a valley, a bridge, a plain and a city centre and are much better than regional personalities staring at the screen looking awkward!

For some reason the Beach ident on ITV1Wales has been shown before network programmes many times now including before This Morning today and before Shane last night!