Anybody who listens to the BBC’s online radio service will have noticed that their brands have been updated. This post is a quick review of what they’ve done and an assessment of whether it works.

I find that brand portfolios are always a tricky subject. You find that with any large organization who develop a brand portfolio that they normally start off with little or no regard for the over-all styling in regard to each other. New products or services (shall we call them “ventures”) develop as a law unto themselves.

Suddenly, one day a marketing manager wakes up and realizes that the umbrella brand identity (in this example the “BBC brand”) seems alien to its children. Then steps are made to bring the portfolio into line so that a consistent style is met across all of them.

I often find Its a tricky process with each brand having people who care patiently about it. Also each brand has its own audience and messaging and so if done incorrectly can really upset peoples perceptions.

However I always think that when a brand portfolio is brought into line, it can’t be measured in the short term re-action but on the long term.

Before & After

Below is a before (left) and after (right) of the BBC’s branding:

Good Things

Overall when you look at the before and after of the BBC’s radio brand you can immediately see that they were in a complete mess when they sat next to each other. There really wasn’t any common theme which ran through them. Now they are cleaner and more consistent with each other. The most consistent elements being that they are all circular and a BBC RADIO brand sits in the same place in regard to the main identity.

They are also not boring and still have elements of uniqueness. I particularly love these minute unique elements. The Radio 3 “clef” mark is really clever as well as the “speech” mark on the radio 4 identity. These really help to subtly distinguish the target audiences and to some degree help you understand what each station does.

One thing that has been carried across is the colors of the old logos. I guess this still lends a little familiarity with the old and keeps some recognition.

Bad things

A few things I’m personally not keen on is the italic text in the 5 live logos - italic text does not line up very well and seems to unbalance things. Personally I try to steer away from using italic text using it only to emphasize areas in block text. It is harder to read and as we mentioned above is terrible to line things up with.

One of the weakest is the BBC RADIO 7 logo - I guess the weird thing that eats into the “7″ is a smile which is carried through from the old logo. Doesn’t do it for me. It needs to be more obvious.

Overall

Overall I don’t think things are too bad though. It’s solid and consistent and compliments the main BBC identity. They are all in line and site nicely together. What are your thoughts readers? Leave comments below…

Share This

↑ Jump up to the comment form

The posts Are ads okay yet?, Brand Identity: What’s Your Threat Level? | Small Business Marketing & Branding, Leaving An Impression, Client Speak, Designing brand identity: book review, are related to this post.

Or why not take time out to find out about the author of the post.