>Now, I know the BBC have broken the current logo's design rules a few times before (take the second News 24 idents, with the channel name in the middle of the screen, for example

And the most recent News 24 doesn't even include '24' in the text, just the rotating 24 type thing. Now you could say that this falls under the design rules for news and for News on BBC ONE it is a rotating 1,6,9 or spinning globe, although there BBC NEWS is at the bottom.

BBC World also breaks the design rules with its new logo.

For heavens sake, they don't have to stick to the rules 100% of the time! They have other things to worry about, eg making good programmes. Do you really care where on-screen the logo is positioned?!

>For heavens sake, they don't have to stick to the rules 100% of the time! They have other things to worry about, eg making good programmes. Do you really care where on-screen the logo is positioned?!

Not really, but when the BBC went to all the bother of drawing up design rules for their channels for them to ignore them. Mind you, I've seen this a lot with a new brand - at first, the branding well controlled, then it lapses.

I'm not saying that BBC NEWS 24 titles aren't good, because they are.

Perhaps Greg Dyke cleared out the guidelines with everything else!

I was rather disappointed when News 24 broke the rules last year. I think the BBC generic style is excellent, with the consistent use of Gill Sans across all media, logos at the centre of the bottom of screen on trails, slides, idents etc.

I personally can't see any way how it can be improved upon. It was must have been introduced so that in this multi-channel age a BBC broadcast is immediately identifiable as one. It is notable that exactly the same style is used on UKTV as well, which emphasises the BBC link.

Right...for the record I worked in Presentation for a while, over the time that the "New Look" came in, and there were very hard and fast rules set up regarding trails,idents and interclips (the 3 sec animations between trails) They should ALWAYS have the BBC Channel at the bottom middle of the screen throughout the trail. The programme details should ALWAYS be Gill Sans Bold and upper case for Programme name, subtitle in Gill Sans, upper and lower case and ditto for the day and time. There are not supposed to be ANY exceptions. ALL trails are made by presentation...although some may be made in the regions following the rules. All regional trails should follow the same rules. Here come the exceptions ....Radio Trails only have to put the Station name in the last few secs of the trail. And as for News 24...they do not come under the Presentation department at all....they are News only, so there, I now have that off my chest !!!

>Right...for the record I worked in Presentation for a while, over the time that the "New Look" came in, and there were very hard and fast rules set up regarding trails,idents and interclips (the 3 sec animations between trails) They should ALWAYS have the BBC Channel at the bottom middle of the screen throughout the trail. The programme details should ALWAYS be Gill Sans Bold and upper case for Programme name, subtitle in Gill Sans, upper and lower case and ditto for the day and time. There are not supposed to be ANY exceptions. ALL trails are made by presentation...although some may be made in the regions following the rules. All regional trails should follow the same rules

The operative word here is should. Few regional trailes in the North East & Cumbria region managed to get it right and sometime last year, there were some trails for Horizon, Omnibus and somet else where the channel name just faded up at the end.

As for the News 24 ident... welll is it an ident or a news programme title sequence? News 24 doesn't have continuity announcements so I'd go for the latter. Therefore if it is a title sequence then it doesn't need the station ID on it.

>As for the News 24 ident... welll is it an ident or a news programme title sequence? News 24 doesn't have continuity announcements so I'd go for the latter.

It does sort of - before a non news programme, you get the newsreader saying 'There'll be a full news round-up at <insert time>'
[Softer Dum-Dum]- station ident appears
'And now on BBC News 24 it's time for <insert programme name>'

Though personally I would have preferred it if they'd kept the flags for this bit.

>The operative word here is should. Few regional trailes in the North East & Cumbria region managed to get it right and sometime last year, there were some trails for Horizon, Omnibus and somet else where the channel name just faded up at the end.

I think that was deliberate, there is currently a Tomorrow's World trailer running in the same style.

I think it is where it is a general trail for the programme (not showing any actual scenes from the programme) as opposed to a trail for a specific edition of the programme. A subtle difference, though quite why it should break the rule for not showing channel ident throughout I don't know.

I have to say, News 24's "the channel is the programme" approach, like MTV, is rather offputting, and I would much rather they had an ident - the flagsd were cool and could have been adapted for time of day and theme of programme they were introducing, and then have the news titles or the titles of the programme being shown. (PS - whoever is in charge of the titles for N24 programmes - why are they all the same? and really boring?)

On News 24, apart from the feature programmes in the evenings and at weekends, the channel IS the programme, and I think the using the flag idents alongside the corporate BBC news titles would seem a bit confused.

I agree, though, the flag idents were great and I was disappointed to see them go so soon, although I do love the countdown to the hour we have now.

Despite all these I've still seen a few trails for normal shows that seem to come from outside of presentation (eg the caption in the end is the wrong font and a bit higher up and smaller than usual) for no apparent reason.

Also, an idea for News 24 idents - like BBC 1 has the balloon and 2 has the big 2, it could have a theme of clocks (24, you see!) with 12 different ones to lead to the top of the hour telling the acutal time and a few generic ones (different colours, that sort of thing) with the hands on the clocks etc. moving around too fast/blurry to see the time, to lead into the programmes on the half hour with voiceovers. Then, the news bulletins themselves could be just called "BBC News" to avoid channel/programme confusion.

>Despite all these I've still seen a few trails for normal shows that seem to come from outside of presentation (eg the caption in the end is the wrong font and a bit higher up and smaller than usual) for no apparent reason.

If you watch News 24 on BBC 1 overnight or on cable it will be in 14:9 with black bars. Relative to the bottom of the black bar and the geight of the visable frame, they should be in the same position with the same size.

Nooo, not that, normal trails on normal-sized BBC 1 & 2. I guess it's one of those things that you've got to see to know what I'm going on about and it happens so rarely that none of you have probably noticed. The general effect is as if someone outside presentation has made it.

Anyway, on the subject of widescreen stuff, I noticed BBC 2 analouge messed up last night. They showed a trail, slide and ident in widescreen (the full monty, not just the little bars you get on analouge for n24 or eastenders or whatever) and then went into a movie in widescreen even though it the actual film wasn't, meaning there were big black bars both at the top and bottom and left and right and the film was in a little box!

>Anyway, on the subject of widescreen stuff, I noticed BBC 2 analouge messed up last night. They showed a trail, slide and ident in widescreen (the full monty, not just the little bars you get on analouge for n24 or eastenders or whatever) and then went into a movie in widescreen even though it the actual film wasn't, meaning there were big black bars both at the top and bottom and left and right and the film was in a little box!

This may have been due to a breakdown in the analogue transmission suite and the digital output being used instead - only the source was obviously before the black bars were removed.

That would explain the same announcer popping up on BBC 1 not long after, when the same mistake happened (only for about 5 seconds during a slide, though)