ITV Discussion Thread

Unfortunately it's probably people like you in marketing causing such rebrands - most of the general public aren't that stupid and soon make the connection between the four squares and "ITV1", hence giving them a strong branding device.

Something like the Yorkshire Chevron or Granada G would never be created nowadays.

Looks like Autumn '81 according to The TV Room

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-b/b-101/main-000-276.jpg

Link http://thetvroom.com/itv/itv-1-050-promo-010.html

Central, Westcountry, West of England and Wales (all Carlton regions excluding London).

HTV was kept the same until 2002?

Yes, it was still called HTV until 2002, but they used a version of the Carlton heart idents from 2001-2002. When the network became simply ITV1, HTV became ITV1 West of England and ITV1 Wales. Both these regions had the regional idents with the boxes in scenic locations (like Central and Westcountry) from 2003-2004.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5ZH3scKzg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-osngFDEkA

The Granada 'G' I agree probably wouldn't exist, but the Chevron could easily appear (in fact, a similar thing was used recently on a 'visit Yorkshire' poster). There's such a thing as "moving with the times" and then there's also "not very good designs".

It's nothing to do with being stupid. Of course the public can make a connection with a good branding device. Four squares in a row is not a good branding device. It's an even worse branding device when it's lifted directly from your closest competitor.

The McDonalds golden arches are a super branding device, recognisable instantly and well known. People don't, generally, build a cosy relationship with 'three blue squares and a yellow one'. It's as ridiculous as the BBC One "circle device" in their new idents. Do you genuinely think ordinary people see a circle and go "that reminds me of BBC One!".

I have to agree with Brekkie... the four blocks were a memorable device. But the problem is for a while the same colour scheme was used for ITV2, not to mention ITV News, ITV Sport etc.

I suppose, that it why with the 2006 rebrand, each channel & sub brand logo was given it's own colour scheme. Although they brands such as News have been tied to channels, the colouring scheme works well in my opinion, the problem is that the shaping & design for the logo wasn't that bold.

The thing is, even if the blocks weren't memorable, were they any less memorable than what replaced them which has no distinctive feature whatsoever?

The comparison to the like of the Granada logo don't really apply. ITV companies of the past were able to build recognition by a combination of being implicitly associated with individual programmes (worth its weight in gold, and diluted when the association is with everything a channel makes -- I would go so far as to say that Endemol has a stronger affinity with its target audience these days than ITV does) combined in many cases by the station personalities which counted for much more than some graphic device.

Granada was "The North". Granada was Corrie. Granada was Colin Weston (at least in its patch). ITV1 is, well, the third terrestrial station. And a graphical device is supposed to make up for this?

ITV's problem is that none of it stands for anything any more. It has no real USP. It's just a mish-mash of popular but ultimately forgettable television programmes that on the whole it doesn't even make.

Where does it go from here? One thing's for sure, some snazzy graphical device isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. It needs to define itself.

For ITV News and ITV Sport though having the same colour scheme worked well - it linked it to ITV1 without having to explicitly link it, and the 4 squares worked superbly for ITV News, especially the regional news. From what I recall I don't think ITV Sport really adopted it - they just used their own blue/yellow logo.

I agree ITV2 didn't really work with it's inverted colour scheme - though ITV3 worked superbly IMO with the cube. Overall though I think it was more effective than having to stick the ITV1 logo on everything - and not too sure I'm a fan of just switching the colour for various channel logos.


Again you assume the Great British public are stupid (and the circle is a whole different ballgame to what we're talking about here!). And people don't exactly build a "cosy relatiuonship" with 'text in yellow box and a 1' either.

Interesting though you bring up the McDonald arches - a branding device which is instantly recogniseable - and 50 years old. I can't really think of any commercial logos currently around from new companies which are based around a symbol rather than a font. The only exception really is the Olympic Logo - though that spells out 2012, while Sochi 2014's logo is text based.

Apple computers; to a lesser extent the windows logo for example. Relatively new I suppose.

Nike.