Ident reviews 10:13

Above is an ident for Channel 4 Television and was created in 1982. I feel that it is suited to its purpose of  promoting the stations logo and adding personality to the ident. The ident itself is very basic but I feel that the ident is bold and eye catching as with the dark background and the bright colours on the logo itself it is a very good feature. Overall I would say that this is a good ident.


Above is the Sky 1 ident from 1996. Around this time Sky 1 was not a major channel as it is today as the channel could only be accessed via the Sky set top box but now with the platform being more open and with the channel able to be accessed through over providers and means such as Sky Player on the Xbox 360 and Virgin Media Television. I feelt eh ident itself is of a good edited standard but seems different to regular british idents and may have alienated some audiences as it is very similar to the 21st Century Fox ident and may have seemed rather odd for british viewers to see this on their screens.We can see today how Sky 1's idents have chnaged rather drastically and the channel has established itself as a family station. Because of how I don't think this fits in with Sky's programming, I think this is a bad ident.


Above is the BBC 1 Ident for christmas time of 1975. I feel the ident is rather basic and doesn't really cover a theme, it looks to me as if the BBC justadded a few snowflakes behind the spinning globe ident they usually have which you can see below, this is a still shot of their usual ident from the same time. Because of how basic this ident is and thye fact i doesn't seem to fit in with the time and thatr the logo is different to their usual ident, creating bad identification in the use of the ident, I would say this is a bad ident.




Above is one of Channel 5's many new idents which they began rolling out February time 2011. In the last year, Channel 5 have tried recreating their brand image to attract a new audience and so far, I feel they are doing this well, they are trying to capture niche target audiences through a wave of new shoes including many Z list celebrities such as through their OK! TV, The Vanessa Show as well as acquiring programmes such as Big Brother which was sold last year by Endemol after Channel 4 never renewed their exclusive license with the publisher. I would say that this ident is good as it establishes Channel 5's brand and it is generally nice to look at.


Above is the ident for NickToons 2010. What I like about this ident is how it is so incorporated within the brand of Nickelodeon etc. I feel the train idea is that of a good one, where it is all in a cartoon type of format as NickToons air Cartoons to the age range of between 5 years to 10 years. Aswell as this, the ident is to a good editing standard and has a lot of bright colours; I feel that for these reasons, this is a good ident.


Above is the ident of MTV UK from 2010 and is still ran today. It features stripey objects that have a very fluid movement. I especially like the music used in the ident as it matches the movements of what the characters are doing in the promotion. I would say that this is a good ident as it suits the stations personality and how they establish themselves being quirkey yet stylish through much of their programming and the ident can portray this well.


Above is an ident for ITV 1 from 2007. This i still ran today and fits in to a theme of lifestyle idents such as Gardens etc. In this ident we can see a diverse gathering of people from many ages, all having fun and communally sharing an experience, the experience being "in the park playing with bubbles". I would imagine this ident to b played out during daytime television and if so, it allows people to escape and see this nice, bright, happy scene. Overall I would say that this ident is very well suited at keeping the brand of ITV together and portrays this rather well.


The above ident of for the History Channel UK. The ident is portraying the station as a giant book and we see a few historical scenes through this but not inside the book, on the outer edge. I do not quite understand why the station logo is not displayed on this, instead it is just a standard text watermark stating that this is the UK History channel. Overall I would say that this is a bad ident as it doesn't shine through the identity of the station, instead it seems like after the network paid the designer they just through a bit of text above this in a video editing utility, althought this ident is very economical with the long ending allowing it to fill different time gaps. Possible improvements upon this would be to use some brighter colours and incorporate the stations branding a bit more such as the logo.


Above is an ident for BBC 4 from 2005. The ident is a bee landing on some flowers. You can see in this that the bee jumps to various flowers. A few seconds in to the ident I notice that the flower in the top left had expanded, however, in editing it looks as though a bit of the frame had got cut off, I notice this a lot ore that there are 2 to 3 seperate layers being cropped in this production. A part of me feels that this could be the effect that the station was looking for as I think they aimed to magnify the various shots. I feel this is a bad ident as it would seem to the average user that the ident is badly edited and I don't really understand how this ident fits in with the identity of BBC 4, this may be more suited to being aired as a show promo for a gardening programme, on a specialist channel such as UKTV Gardens or a daytime television generic ident. BBC 4 do not air until 7:00PM of an evening.


The above ident is for Sky News from the year 1990. This ident has served Sky News as a brand well, because even in their most recent idents they have a similar theme of large moving letters. However, I think that the ident is lacking personality and is merely used as a placeholder and timefiller for the station. I think that this is a bad ident and it could perhaps use some shots of sky news' presenters and maybe scenes of reporters on location, just to liven this shot up a bit.

The idents I shall be comparing will be the Channel 5 ident and the MTV. I feel that with Channel 5's revamp they're target audience is similar to that of MTV Hit's target audience.

I shall start by speaking about the brand identity that the idents portray. I feel that the Channel 5 ident makes Channel 5 look like a modern day television station. I feel that the MTV ident portrays this also, yet making this seem like a quirky, indie station with the use of the odd characters in the ident itself.

The new set of Channel 5's idents as I mentioned earlier in the description of Channel 5's ident with their refresh of idents, I do not think that the refresh portray the aging of the brand very well as C5 change their branding and logos so often. Whereas MTV's ident portrays their brand well because they have only ever had one major redesign of thei logo, showing the age of the brand but how connected they are with audience trends.

To summarise I feel that Channel 5 are playing catchup and we can see this in the radical changes of their brand identity, but I feel that MTV have established their brand well and can portray this in such an excellent manner in using the latest trends in graphics to keep up with how their audiences feel.