When you think of iconic public service brands in Britain, there are probably two places your head goes: British Rail and the National Health Service. The arrows of indecision and blue-and-white NHS have been in use for decades, yet both feel modern, and fit in perfectly to the contexts we find them in; road signs, lanyards, ticketing. They’re the faces of British pioneers, of systems that are the envy of the world, and that (well, at least in one case) promote the kind of flag-waving patriotism that puts them into Olympic opening ceremonies.
It’s in doing this for the world of broadcasting that designer Martin Lambie-Nairn—the man behind the personality 2s, the BBC One balloon, O2’s bubbles, and the original idea for Spitting Image—became an icon of modern design. In the wake of his death on Christmas Day, I want to kick off Good Screen talking about the works that will outlive him — two new, public service icons: Channel 4 and the BBC.
Channel 4
In 1982, the BBC was still using a mechanical model as an ident for its flagship television channel, and the disparate network of regional ITV stations all did their own thing. The idea of a channel’s identity being iconic, even well-loved, seemed alien.
Enter Channel 4. Made up of nine colourful, computer-generated blocks set to a four-second Fourscore by David Dundas, it instantly had more charm than the other three channels put together. The blocks highlighted the channel’s total reliance on shows from independent production companies, but the loose connection meant they could break apart, even change shape — and that’s where things got interesting.
The more the channel came into its own, the more the presentation team felt they could play with the blocks. The 4 became an American football, an Italian flag, and a pair of sumo wrestlers, and this theme persisted into the new millenium; with a generous dash of CGI, Lambie-Nairn’s blocks became traffic signs, hay bales, and even a strange honking proto-Terminator.
Channel 4’s neighbours in the EPG have reinvented themselves over and over, defining themselves by the stars of the day or the notion of people coming together. While it’s been willing to change up its presentation over the year, Channel 4’s blocks are at the core of those designs, full of a little personality telling you that you’re probably going to see something unique, bold, or a little weird.
The BBC
The job Lambie-Nairn and his design agency had at the BBC was the polar opposite to their task for Channel 4. The BBC was 70 years old, and its visual identity was a mess; each station, internal division, and system had its own logo, each costing the licence fee payer thousands of pounds and each diluting the BBC’s core image.
Worse still, the BBC’s main logo — three diagonal blocks with three lines underneath — didn’t really work anywhere. The Bs would lose distinctive features when you shrunk them on screen, and felt uncomfortable next to brand names; the chosen colours of the lines and blocks meant it could fade away on colour print.
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The diagonal blocks were an iteration of a design the BBC had been using since the 1950s, so it felt old, stuffy, and unfit for a new millenium. Most importantly, they cost a lot of money to produce, with letterheads being anywhere from four to ten colour — expensive at the time, especially for a corporation funded by the public.
Lambie-Nairn’s changes were straightforward: straighten the blocks, set the text in the timeless Gill Sans, and standardise the myriad identities. Instead of big zany logos for each of the BBC’s channels, their idents would show the stations’ personalities and what the corporation wanted them to stand for. Lambie-Nairn presented these changes in an internal BBC video, setting out how such a simple change would work across the whole corporation:
It has a corporate job; a nations job; a regions job; it needs to work with the directorates; [and] it has a commercial job. Then come the brands; TV brands, radio brands, and local radio brands. Now even if you forget the aesthetics for a minute, this system delivers two benefits. One, it all looks like it comes from the same organisation; and two, you can add any name you like to it after the BBC logo. […] We didn’t try to put all the personality into the logo, but recognised each BBC brand would have a property of its own to do that job.
In a stroke, Lambie-Nairn’s work transformed the corporation; each station became clear in its purpose, united around a common identity. Britain’s biggest cultural export was set up for the future; 24 years after the Gill Sans BBC’s introduction, it remains the beating heart of an organisation that’s changed beyond recognition.
These aren’t the only brands Martin Lambie-Nairn leaves behind, but they’re absolutely the ones that have stood the test of time. The BBC’s branding may have evolved, embracing the logos and unique typefaces the ‘97 refresh meant to eliminate, but those three squares remain just as clean and sharp in the era of iPlayer and apps as they did at the dawn of digital television.
Channel 4 has gone even further to embrace its Lambie-Nairn identity, rebranding its entire network around the blocks, and thrusting it into the future with a neatly integrated playback block in the logo for streaming service All 4.
Over several lockdowns we’ve all seen these logos more and more; at the heart of endless news alerts, on our smart speakers, and between Taskmaster box sets. They’re at the heart of things we go to in times of crisis for information and diversion, and they’ll do that for decades to come.
That’s the true legacy of Martin Lambie-Nairn; he’s the designer behind two icons of our time, the public faces of public service broadcasting.
Hey! Thanks for reading the first Good Screen. This is something I nerd out about a lot with friends but not something I’ve really committed to writing before, so I hope it’s been interesting. I’d really appreciate your thoughts on what I’ve written, and what you’d like to see me write about next — by all means drop a comment. And if you liked this piece, please share Good Screen so more people can read it!