The Observer Brief - The Ident Approach

THE IDENT APPROACH:

There are some fantastic idents on some of the British TV channels such as Proud Creative and Universal Everything's collaborations for S4/C, BBC 1 and their newer idents, BBC 2, BBC 3, and the Channel 4 channels (including E4 and More 4) and even Channel 5 (or 'five' as it it is now known).

These type of idents are widely recognised as intelligent, progressive and inspiring in a world of slick but samey idents (which obviously are good for the broadcast design companies, real bread and butter work), and are already in the consciousness of the British psyche, as they are seen on the TV every day. I would have also thought that the kind of people who buy the Observer also watch these channels rather than ITV (which is in my opionion TV for common bogtrotters and idiots).

The Idents range from the cinematic, the high end 3d and many of them were highly likely to have been very expensive and time-consuming to produce. It looks like they go for some great ideas and simply see them through, which in the case of the BBC 1 idents can cost several million pounds to produce. My understanding of many of the smaller channels idents are that they are made more graphically as the production costs are greatly reduced; it is cheaper have a small handful of designers produce the work graphically and output them with Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects then it is to set up a big HD shoot.

I do think there is still scope to work some good ideas cheaply, and think for the Observer they would need a good graphic plot with enough flexibility to use either on it's own or in combination with footage. Without knowing much about budgets it would be a vcase of speculation and best guessing.