The award winning Channel Four identity was designed in 1982 by Robinson Lambie-Nairn. They won the initial pitch against Michael Peters and Wolf Olins.
From their initial presentation Lambie-Nairn researched Channel Four's philosophy and seized the fact that they would be buying all their programmes in, so Channel Four would be a patchwork.
Their first idea was to illustrate the coming together of these elements. The first six ideas of 'coming together' all implied movement. One idea used the the colours of a television gun (RGB) and Channel Four liked the use of strong colour and agreed the 'coming together' theme should be emphasised and developed further.
Having created the logo, Lambie Nairn then used a computer to animate outlines of the blocks to the final freeze. The movements were then hand coloured and shot, but it didnt work, it was lacking shadow and lighting. So they decided to go to Los Angeles and Bo Gehring Aviation who specialised in computer animation to have differing sequences of the same basic symbol done entirely on computer, as at the time there was nowhere in the UK to go for this.
The results were ground breaking, entertaining and a flawless piece of tv graphic design.
Channel 4 Pre-Launch1982
Channel 4 starts transmission today. Here's David Vickery here with an important announcement.
Channel 4 Launch1982 How it all began on 2nd November 1982. Before Countdown, Channel Four treated us to a montage of their new programmes accompanied by the famous theme.
John Craven's Newsround1982
From the same day over on BBC 1, here's news of the launch from John Craven...
Channel 4 1st Day Closedown1982 Here's Paul Coia in vision as he previews Channel 4's programmes for their second day and thanks us for tuning in on the first ...
Examples of Channel 4 idents with continuity, and presentation styling...
Commercial Breaks1982
Is this continuity ? Well it is coming from Channel Four and its not a programme. This is what happened when the ITV station selling the advertising space, err couldn't! So instead a treat for all you Laurel & Hardy fans ..........
right clip - later in the same year no ads at all on C4 because of an actors dispute between Equity and the IBA
more continuity examples from Channel Four....
Examples of programme promotions...
Channel 4 Nightime
Late night ???????? ????????????
Christmas on Channel 4
Christmas Idents1982 / 1986
Here's a whole batch of Christmas Channel 4 idents and trails, starting with their first year's festive ident (left) and a few years later from 1986 (right)
Channel 4 Promotional Campaigns
Channel 4 Miscellaneous
