BBC Brand: Difference between revisions

As the world’s oldest public service broadcaster, the BBC brand is known worldwide due to its iconic logo and brand identity. Originally beginning as an identiy for their TV broadcasts it has evolved over the decades to encompass radio, podcasts and motion graphics for its on-demand services BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

BBC Creative created a campaign for the BBC brand called #ThisIsOurBBC.^[1]

BBC

Produced by	BBC Creative and Wolff Olins
Country	United Kingdom
Introduced	2021
Tagline	‘To be the most creative organisation in the world’.
Website	https://www.bbc.co.uk/branding/

The BBC Identity was established with its television broadcast. Having delivered the first broadcast in 1936, no consideration had been given to a brand identity to ensure the public know it was a BBC broadcast. It was later to be established ten months after the first broadcast, imitating cinema and showing BBC Television in a variety of different ways.

In 1946, at a radio industry exhibition for RadiOlympia at Muswell Hill. The engineer, William Paffard was responsible for the creation of the BBC Tuning signal card. He dashed to the local WH Smiths and on large white card painted it using ink and a brush. ^[2]

According to the academic, Melissa Morton, idents are logos which appear in between programmes and “…are around 10 seconds long and are seen and heard roughly 3600 times over their ‘shelf-lives’”^[3] Concluding she writes of the latest idents for BBC One and Two: “…seem to reflect the corporation’s hybrid strategy. With the use of simulated smartphone screens, the junctions between programmes on BBC One during lockdown resembled a social media feed, showing glimpses of individuals in their own homes doing various everyday activities. BBC Two’s idents, in contrast, utilise a ‘mood strategy’ reminiscent of the organisation of content on online platforms.”^[3]

On the 20th of October 2021, the BBC design rebrand launched. ^[4] The Times reported that the cost of the rebrand was £7m.^[5]

Greg Bryant argues that it isn’t a rebrand as: ” As far as I can see, the underlying services haven’t changed, the offering from the BBC hasn’t changed, and the corporation remains inherently the same – with the same structure and beliefs. For me, this is purely a visual update, a well-considered facelift and a rebrand is much, much more than a new logo or typeface. There is so much thought and strategy that goes into a rebrand that quite often goes unnoticed by the audience but is absolutely essential.”^[6]

Design Boom noted the discontent across the internet with respect to the rebrand’s motion graphics and believed it diminished the differention between services. ^[7]

In defence, Curious brand argued that rebrands are rarely cheap and the total up-front cost would be saved long term as they no longer had to pay the licensing fees of the previous typefaces they employed. ^[8]

The BBC previously used the following sans-serif and humanist typefaces: Arial, Helvetica and Gill Sans for their corporate identity. As these typefaces were designed for print usage in the 20th century. They had legibility issues when deployed across digital devices. As BBC’s UX Principal, David Bailey, said: “…we’ve used Helvetica (or Arial if you’re on a PC) for our digital reading experience, and Gill Sans for our master branded services (e.g. News, Sport, Weather etc”.^[9] In addition, the BBC paid licencing fees to use these typefaces across the corporation. ^[10]

Given the issues over brand coherency, accessibility and legibility, and cost of paying for typefaces, the BBC commissioned the typographic studio, Dalton Maag in 2015–2023 to create a new custom typeface. It was entitled BBC Reith and supported 110 languages, 22 fonts and styles in Sans, Seif, Condensed, and Rounded (italics were included within these styles), weights from bold, light, medium and regular and supported the following writing scripts: Arabic, Cyrillic, Latin.^[11][12][13]

To make it accessibile, Maag had to consider that the typeface would be used by an audience of all ages, legibile in multiple languages and readable across devices. ^[14] Bruno Maag commenting on the BBC’s brief for Reith: “In both the sans and the serif you’ll see a calligraphic construction, open counters and apertures, ascenders that project above the cap height, regularised proportions and sharp connections between bowl and stem. The aim is to contrast features. Some anchor the design in tradition, others give a modern and progressive outlook. Together you get BBC expressiveness, which still works on small screens.”^[15]

There was also a four-day workshop, which featured 28 designers from across the BBC who tested the typeface over products, services and platforms. ^[16]

To encourage its adoption amongst BBC staff, BBC Creative employed the design agency, Spin to create an animated poster in 2018.^[17]

It was first deployed for BBC News online, Weather and Sports in 2017. ^[18][19][20]

In 2018, it won the Red Dot Design Award. ^[21]

The rebranded BBC logos were introduced in October 2021.^[22]

The studio Zelig were hired to create a new audio masterbrand for the BBC. ^[23] Internally the audio was called Daphne, after Daphne Oram.

Zelig state that the sound is split into three parts, which represent the three blocks of the BBC. The sound features bass, sub bass and four synthesizer sounds. To create the audio Zelig received a brief from the BBC Creative and Wolff Olins, they then had a series of meetings with BBC stakeholders to understand the objective of the audio sound and its touch points (where people would interact with the sound). They then proceeded to do a competitor analysis of sonic audio and also an audit of the BBC in addition to reviewing the academic literature of the advantages and disadvantages of sonic branding; the impact it has on the listeners’ response and how it represents the brand. They undertook the BBC sonic audit to inspire their creative thinking and concepts, given the sonic history of the BBC. In the creative development, they created three catgories, without any visual aids: human, musical, three remixes and four sound design ideas. When displayed to the working group, they were drawn to the sound design options, which Zelig believed mirrored the motion graphics. The final sound was flexible, weighted and modern. One of them eployed a pitch bend called glissando which is a slide between two notes. The audio of the slide reenforced the effortlessness, elasticity and flexibility of the motion graphics.

The finalised mix was produced for Dobly Atmos, Surround Sound and binural for future proofing. ^[24]

It was uploaded to YouTube on 12 January 2023.^[25]

Launched in 2007, the UI and UX for the BBC iPlayer was updated in 2010 and designed by ISO Design. ^[26]

It was further updated in 2014.^[27][28]

The creative design leadership and direction for its thumnnails were designed by Ashley Williamson, the senior designer for BBC iPlayer’s Image Design Studio.^[29]

Originally called iPlayer Radio within the BBC’s Radio & Music department. It covered content discovery, UI and UX.

Rory Pickering and Nick Ritchie redesigned it for v2.0. In 2014 it introduced a separate pop-out audio player for Radio which was designed with Simon Meredith. iPlayer Radio would later be incorporated into BBC Sounds,^[30]

Mother Design were responsible for the 2018 design and worked with BBC UX on the brand strategy, naming and design.^[31][32]

The BBC Sounds’ archive podcast artwork was redesigned by Will Burr in order to ensure coherency.^[33]

The content launch was delivered by Guild Creatives and photographed by Nick Eagle for BBC Creative.^[34]

The BBC in-house team delivered the visual rebrand and technical updates for BBC Sounds.^[35]

The motion graphics for the BBC Masterbrand and nations were designed by SR Partners in collaboration with BBC Creative and Wolff Olinns.^[36]

The design agency, Straga created the new motion graphics for the BBC rebrand in 2022.^[37]

Ravensbourne, University of London manages the BBC Motion Graphics Archive. ^[38]