History of Idents

                          1953

when Abram Games was commissioned to design an on-air image, probably hastened by the imminent arrival of commercial competition. Games, who designed the logo for the Festival of Britain in 1951, created the logo nicknamed the 'Bat's wings' logo, an elegant and rather ethereal image which captured the spirit of the times. In reality, it was an elaborate mechanical brass contraption, with a tiny spinning globe in its centre – for BBC Scotland, the spot in the middle was replaced by a lion.

 The channel's most famous emblem, the globe, appeared in its first guise on 30 September 1963. The first such ident featured the continuity announcer speaking the words 'This is BBC Television' over a spinning globe while a BBC TV caption would appear. 

The first colour pictures in the UK were broadcast by BBC2 in 1967 when it covered Wimbledon, to be followed by BBC1 in 1969. Then BBC 1 introduced the first version of the now famous 'mirror globe' – a rotating globe with a flat globe as visual behind it. The inclusion of the word 'colour' in the station ident could be

viewed as a subtle reminder to the vast majority of the rest of the viewers still watching in black and white to buy a colour TV set. This BBC 1 colour globe was frequently seen in Monty Python's Flying Circus, which featured spoof continuity announcements.

In the 1990s, Martin Lambie-Nairn's company took over responsibility for the BBC's idents, having already worked on the re-branding of BBC News. And so a new look was unveiled for BBC 1 in February 1991 just before Going Live!. It was a version of the traditional globe, but with a much more distinctive use of the numeral '1'.

 Later in the 1990s, the BBC decided a revision of the wider corporate identity was needed, as the current slanting logo did not work very effectively on screen – so the sides were straightened from their idisyncratic 17.5 degree slant, the colour flashes were removed, and the typeface was rendered into Gill Sans.

There is a neat symmetry here, as Eric Gill who created this original typeface was also the key sculptor for the BBC on the original Broadcasting House project in 1932, so once again, the past is echoed and yet freshly reinvented.

Following on from the mother brand revision, the entire suite of BBC Radio logos were re-designed in the next decade, to make them both distinct and coherently joined up as one family.