Friday, December 03, 2010

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 3

Moving slightly away from festive greetings, we turn to 1959-ish, and this trailer caption for the BBC's coverage of the Le Mans 24-hour race. It is the work of graphic designer Terence Greer, and represents an early outing for the Richard Levin-designed BBC tv logo which, quite frankly, has never been bettered in terms of corporate identity. I'm a fan of Eric Gill (well, his work), but nothing in the BBC's post-1997 look can hold a candle to Levin's logo.

5 comments:

ben_sH said...

I almost wish they'd never slanted the boxes, either. That pre '64 look was just so right.

Louis Barfe said...

Agree 100%. Apparently the way the extremities of the slanted lozenges looked in MPEG2 was a major reason why the logo was changed. Could have just gone back to this look. Doric/Derek Italic just says BBC to me.

Robin Carmody said...

A stunning piece of popular art - almost unimaginably modern in its time.

Gavin Sutherland said...

Makes me recall the hand-drawn "Morning in the Streets" boxes, with soft happy nostalgia. The lozenges always looked to me as if they might melt away...)
Keep up the good work mate!

Westengland said...

Another argument for the listings magazines being published on line, in full, is that the graphic material, in particular those in Radio Times from the beginning, are important and should be seen by as many people as possible.