This is the first of 4 blog posts that will look at the identities of the five terrestrial channels. We’ll look at which elements we feel work, and those we feel don’t work quite as well.

BBC channels and services

Above are the four BBC channels with the additional ‘News’ and ‘Parliament’ channel logos. In our opinion, each of the sub-brands work relatively well in isolation, except for the ‘Parliament’ logo where the wording is forced into the available space and doesn’t achieve the same balance in weight and tone as the others. Also, as a collection, the colour palette could have been extended to prevent the use of similar reds.

It wasn’t until we put the logos together that we noticed that only BBC4 and BBC NEWS follow suit. Amongst the other logos, the mixture of upper and lowercase type, bold type and different fonts poses a visual contradiction; the format suggests a visual coherence, whereas the type is neither here nor there. A simple rule of thumb is to be completely different – like the BBC3 logo – or exactly the same.

Alongside the main boxed logos, BBC1 and BBC3 (as shown above) have an element of versatility in their application. The CBBC logo takes things a step further and does a very good job of injecting fun into the design and is by far the most eye-catching of the BBC identities.

The identity for the BBC iPlayer reveals how a simple design can be effective, although the use of the ‘i’ motif is questionable (a personal bugbear, due to its lazy over-use). Unfortunately, the iPlayer colour palette is virtually indistinguishable from the BBC three logotype as it appears in the format above. Again, either completely different or exactly the same.

And finally, we come to what we consider the weakest design of the sub-brands; the ‘HD’ logo. Although the custom HD lettering is quite nice in isolation, the rotated box is out of place. You could argue that this approach takes the BBC box to ‘a new level’, adding a ‘new slant’ etc., but for me it simply doesn’t sit well.

Apart from the slight issues mentioned above, overall the identities work and are complemented by the BBC brand, which is simple and effective.

In the next posts, we’ll deconstruct the ITV, Channel 4 and FIVE logos.

The recent television campaign for Halifax has caught my eye, mainly because I’m not sure what the use of the radio station as a setting is trying to communicate. One of the latest adverts is shown above and here is what I’ve gathered from the campaign.

Halifax, as well as looking after our finances, now also work at a radio station but aren’t very good at it. Okay, the team are obviously being portrayed as ‘friendly’ and ‘approachable’ but aren’t they also coming across unprofessional and annoying? (or is that just me?) Do we want that from a bank?

There is also an issue of radio as a medium. Why a radio station? Is it a pirate radio station that the back-room staff are manning during lunch or are Halifax moving into Media? It doesn’t add up.

Radio isn’t the power it once was and a brand associating itself with it can’t be aiming in the right direction. The music is a selection of cheesy 80’s pop, which for me, isn’t working in their favour. I’m waiting for ‘Living in Box’ for their mortgage adverts – ‘Your house may be a the size of a box but Halifax can help you find that dream…. blah blah’

This approach is nothing new for Halifax – its hard to forget Howard the singing bank clerk who went on to ’star’ in an episode of The Office. This campaign then spawned what seemed like hundreds of karaoke-happy staff who wanted to reveal how badly they could sing. And this was supposed to endear them to us? There is an argument for annoying is memorable but I don’t have time for that. Annoying is memorable because its annoying. I’m never convinced to purchase because of an annoying advert. The only thing it does and does well, is remind you of the brand. But should it be doing more than that?

In contrast HSBC are portraying themselves as multinational, multicultural and are also aiming for the higher end of the market – They want customers with a salaries in the area of £75,000 per year or a mortgage of £250,000 and businesses that exports globally. Halifax seem to want customers that remember Vanilla Ice and like the idea of novelty ‘Hi-five’ hands.

Halifax aren’t on their own at getting it wrong, Barclays failed a few years ago with their ‘big’ campaign, mainly because they sold the virtue of being big, while at the same time closed branches and cut staff (full article at bbc.c.uk).

I thought the ‘big’ campaign looked good and had a strong message, it was a shame it was just poorly timed. View a selection of the ads via youtube.com.

And then there is NatWest, who seem to be basing their entire campaign on the fact that they are open on Saturday. Its not the 90’s, every bank is open on Saturday. If they were open on Sundays, now that would be a selling point.

So who’s getting it right at the moment in the financial market? For me, Lloyds TSB, with the contemporary animation, which launched in 2007, and strong tagline ‘For the journey’, which suggests the long-term relationship you need with a bank.

This campaign works because it doesn’t include any real people to either associate with or dislike. If the characters were real, we’d need to bond with them before we could engage with the brand.

How much of a persuader is a television advert nowadays anyway? With the launch of comparison websites, the benefits of the service providers have been broken down, without any of the gloss of promotion. The lifestyle the advert is trying to sell becomes secondary to all the key benefits.

We’re not deliberately trying to be anti-social, its just that we’ve spent a lot of our time on Twitter – you can catch up with us at @debutcreate – and we’ve found it really useful for getting information out quickly, discovering new trends, gathering information and also, depending on the people you follow, it can be a wealth of inspiration.

We’ve been sent links to amazing sites that we would never have found under our own steam and on a few occasions we’ve built business relationships, found suppliers and secured work.

That’s not to say that Twitter now replaces our conventional forms of marketing or that it should be used solely for promotion – it isn’t simply a case of tweeting about the latest product or service – with Twitter you need to engage with your followers. You can use it like a 24 hr networking event but one that is attended by businesses and friends, and so the tweets need to reflect this diverse audience.

We used to ‘Google’ when we needed information quickly but now, more and more we’re finding that we tweet it first. It’s the human element. Our friends and followers are referring to us and this is more useful than a faceless link that has been forced to the top of Google with clever SEO.

There are negatives, Twitter is getting more commercial and this could cause users to leave, although this move was inevitable. It happened to Google, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube but at least with Twitter you can filter out the followers that are just pushing products for the sake of it. And when it does get too much I’m sure there will be another place we can all move on to.

Having said all that, we’re now making more of an effort to keep this section of our website up to date. We may discuss content or findings from Twitter, highlight what we’re working on or general design and marketing communication topics. Either way, from now on there will be something to see here - as well as @debutcreate.

I’d noticed recently that film poster designs are getting a bit stagnant (cue the barrage of abuse), take for example one of the better films of recent years The Dark Knight, the main poster is well, a bit predictable. (Is it a coincidence that the poster for Inception looks a bit similar? I’ve checked and it is different creatives that produced them.)

Are film poster design concepts getting diluted due to the way films are currently marketed? There seems to be more poster designs issued per film than there used to be (or that I remember), with designs sitting within a set rather than a stand alone iconic image. Are designers running out of ideas when promoting a film due to the amount of promotional material that’s needed?

My favourite from the Dark Knight collection is below, it’s a shame this wasn’t used as the sole promotion for release. Both Batman posters were produced by BLT Associates.

When it comes to film posters, there are a few basic requirements: title, tag line, actors, dates, production details and studio information but there must be more interesting ways to provide this information without designs all looking the same. I understand the importance of getting the actors head shots on the promotional material (although this can cause its own problems, see Bonfire of the Vanities actor names listed in order of importance, which contradicts the image ) but we tend to already know who is starring in the film before we’ve seen the poster or the film hits the screen so is it always really needed?

Posters need to be designed with a bit more creativity – Star wars Episode 1 is a great example. The only negative point I could find with this minimalist design is that it assumes prior knowledge of the Star Wars universe, but its a fairly safe bet that everyone knows the Darth Vader shadow.

On the theme of minimalist designs, there is a current trend of recreating iconic film posters. Street Rat Mag has a small selection plus there is the work of Olly Moss, who also produces a movie poster design per month for Empire magazine

Personally I love most of these new designs but viewing them in context, many fail on a basic level. Both The Shining and the Jurassic Park designs below completely fail to do what a film poster is designed to do.

Aside from the fact that they have none of the usual ‘producer, director, actors, script, etc. information, neither relay any information of the film’s genre or basic plot. Yes, the glass of water is iconic and the carpet does immediately remind you of the Overlook Hotel, but only if you’ve seen the film and understand the reference. These types of design are perfect for DVD/Bluray box covers, T-shirt design, posters but not as film promotional posters. They don’t introduce the film to an new audience.

What film poster design needs is a happy medium, designs that catch the eye, introduce the film genre and characters but also stray from the obvious treatments. The 4 designs above are my favourite of recent years and they do this perfectly.

Have I missed any great designs that are worth a mention?

It was inevitable there were going to be winners from the poetry community, having a way with words being an advantage. Thanks to everyone who entered, it was a difficult choice, but we have announcements to make!

First prize, of £500 worth of design time goes to Nadia Kingsley for ‘Poets, artists, butterflies all benefit‘. The prize was awarded for a snappy catchline and a very worthwhile cause.

Five runners up prizes of £100 worth of design time go to:

Ian Hughes for our new slogan, ‘Design not great? Debut Create!‘
Toni Gemayel who only needs one word: ‘fun!’
Jo Bell for the insightful ‘Poetry is designing with words!‘
Dave Finchett for his poem ‘Five words, I deserve to’
Heather Wastie for ‘extraordinary talent demands exceptional design’

Thanks to all who entered, including a special mention to Toby, whose cat Fatwans dislikes Helvetica!