Embryonic

Somewhere hidden in ITV-land, the hosts of Good Morning Britain are up and about doing pilots ahead of next Monday's launch. So expect a dripfeed of pre-publicity photographs and interviews. And, this morning, the revelation of the new logo...

I can sort of imagine the pitch: "It's like a speech bubble for the social media generation, with egg yolk connotations - and a hint of guitar plectrum. It says we'll be connecting with you at breakfast, and plucking at your heart strings with the best human interest stories".

• 0840 update: Alternate take, from @blogmywiki: "It's a sunrise - but an anchored sunrise, a new dawn - with a point to make"

Golden oldies

In this week of Five Live 20th birthday celebrations, here's the original "up to the hour" jingle from 1994, part of a huge package created by Allan Coates (of late-ish era The Hollies, from 1981 to 2004) and Kim Goody (former cast member of ITV Saturday morning show No 73, alongside Sandi Toksvig).


Mike Lewis, Head of Sport, lighted upon Allan and Kim working as The Voice and Music Company, I remember the day the first tapes arrived, with various editors and Controller Jenny Abramsky assembling in Studio 1A, and ruminating on where to add the ident. Jenny, trained as a Studio Manager, felt a music edit was required, and razor blades flashed. I suspect she still might think her version was the one we used.

If you played the up to the hour jingle at 59.06 on the clock, it ended exactly at the top of the hour. We never used pips, but some programmes prided themselves on hitting the clock exactly. Whereas the drive time show, launched as John Inverdale Nationwide, was a programme you really couldn't set your watch to...

Allan and Kim went on to do launch stings for News 24, packages for Sky, At The Races and many more. They're still in business, now as Soho Square Studios.

In rooting around the web for stuff from the launch, I found this picture of a car sticker. Simon Calder has written about the difficulty various add agencies had in finding an opening theme; the first wave of posters featured "Follow Mike", with the conceit that "Mike", a microphone, would take you to the heart of news and sport, on the end of a wiggly wire. It didn't last long...

Olympic odds and ends

The Telegraph says the seats have been ordered for the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, and they are all either black or white. Somehow, they'll be arranged to pick out the London logo on opposite sides of the arena. But let's hope we don't see much of them - let's hope the best pictures are taken when it's full of people.

I've also noted a lack of journalistic investigation into one burning question. Who was inside the Wenlock and Mandeville suits at the launch in London ? The Teletubby operators made several news stories, and there used to be some interest as to who was inside the Womble suits when they were on Top of the Pops. (Andy Price, formerly a reporter for You and Yours, was a "reserve").

Wenlock looked rather poorly padded at St Paul's School in Whitechapel. It can't have been Roger Mosey...

Lions tamed

A day late, but this story from the Telegraph reveals that England's footballing lions were, technically, heraldic leopards - and French. The graphics team has now tweaked them - but needs permission from the top for the change.

Before After

Making it fit

A visit to Wales this weekend reminded me how dogged the Taffia are... The multiscreen at Llandudno Junction is, of course a "Sinema" on the bi-lingual road signs to Cineworld. And now Wales Online reveals that after months of speculation, Cardiff International Airport is to be renamed Cardiff Airport, making room for Maes Awyr Caerdydd on its new logo. It might be that international got dropped because of the ungainly translation options, including "rhyngwladwriaethol".

The name game

Good interview with David Placek, of product-naming company Lexicon, on the CIO blog. They're the people who dreamed up, amongst others, Blackberry, Pentium, Azure, Powerbook and the perhaps less-appealing Febreze for companies prepared to pay for their services. And apparently there's never a quick, Eureka moment - they take typically four months before they're satisfied they've got a winner.

David says most companies come to Lexicon "when they have tried to name the new product internally or tried to work with their ad agency, and then they run into trademark problems or language roadblocks, where it's just not easily pronounced in certain languages, or it means something negative.

"Also, they can't seem to get that internal support—people aren't rallying around. So they're a little bit behind the 8 ball, and now they've lost time. It's no longer fun, and they're frustrated. So they'll say, we'll send you the list of what we've done, and now it's up to you."

Five Live was the work of a British company engaged by the BBC - I remember the day it was revealed to the core team of launch editors; we looked furtively at each other and mouthed "Fruit juice ?"

Happy birthday, LBC

LBC radio celebrates its 35th birthday today - and has some nice pictures of past presenters and logos on its site. I joined the BBC as a news trainee just as LBC started, and there were some managers in Broadcasting House at the time who were suspicious that a independent radio news service (IRN ran alongside LBC) could really work without surreptitious use of material lifted from the BBC - so tapes were quietly whirring at launch to monitor the output. There was no lifting.

LBC has been through many incarnations - some more successful than others - and many good friends have worked there. Its standards in bulletins have always been high. The stuff round the bulletins has been much more variable - and the question remains (for LBC and Bob Shennan at C4 radio) can anyone make big money producing high quality speech radio in the UK ?

More logos

A previous post on logos led to the discovery that Saul Bass, famous to me as a designer of movie titles and film posters, also did iconic work with major company logos. Much more here, in Signal Noise

From the opening titles of PSYCHO.....

Same difference - converging logos

http://www.logolounge.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=607

This interesting annual review of the world of corporate logos identifies that big companies (and the designers they work with) can be prey to fashion. Of course, they'll insist that the new logo captures the very essence of their company's dynamic new proposition....