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Bat Wings: 60 years of the BBC ident

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"All branding is about setting yourself apart and trying to be clear to your audience or customers that you stand for this set of values.” Absolutely spot on…and so it should be, because those words of wisdom come from Martin Lambie-Nairn – the man who has been responsible for many years for the BBC’s on-screen look, otherwise known as “idents”.

For today we celebrate 60 years of BBC idents, the day when the very first ident – the famous “bat wings” – flew onto our screens.

 

Bat Wings

 

Interestingly, Lambie-Nairn calls Abram Games – the man who created this slightly Gothic and menacing moving logo – a genius. And yet it is an abstract image that actually doesn’t really evoke or stand for anything (apart from bats, as we know.)

But to be fair, there was an awful lot about branding and advertising that we didn’t know back then – especially when it came to television. This was, after all, the age of televisual innocence. Can you imagine a local poet in horn-rimmed glasses reading a ditty after BBC London news these days? Even swapping the horn-rimmed glasses for a pair of thick black-framed Ray Bans and some sculpted hair, it just wouldn’t happen.

So back in the 1950s, the BBC didn’t have a load of Creativepool designers to call on to whip up a flashy ident for the pride of the nation. In fact, the only people they could approach were poster designers, and thus Abram Games – one of the greatest poster designers of the 20th century – won the commission. It was worth 200 guineas, plus 70 guineas for an on-screen clock, and a 15-guinea retainer.

Ironically, Games didn’t even own a television.

Far from beavering away on his not-yet-invented Mac in his studio, Games found the best way to tap into his creativity was on public transport. No noisy kids in the back to disturb him, nobody stinking out the place by devouring a bucket of KFC, and nobody waxing unlyrical on their mobiles. No, no, no. Public transport was the territory of grown-ups who needed to go places in a civilised fashion.

“He used to scribble on anything that was available,” says daughter Naomi. “A newspaper, scraps of paper that were in his pocket, and then he'd get into the studio, get onto his tall stool at his desk, lay out a sheet in front of him and begin. He sometimes did hundreds and hundreds of these sheets of layout paper before he actually resolved his design."

 

Iconic as it is now – and, depending on one’s taste, as pleasing as it is artistically (if not geometrically) – the BBC didn’t quite know what to make of the model made of piano wire and brass initially. The official description reads:

"The abstract pattern consists of two intersecting eyes which scan the globe from north to south and east to west, symbolising vision and the power of vision. Flashes of lightning on either side represent electrical forces and the whole form takes the shape of wings which suggest the creative possibilities of television broadcasting."

Well, quite. A lot of newspaper reviews suggest that most critics didn’t really like it. But in spite of this, “bat wings” lasted for eight years before being replaced by another globe – and this one would represent the BBC for another four decades.

Since then, the globe has featured in the various incarnations of the BBC1 idents. Bringing us full circle and back to Martin Lambie-Nairn and what he says about branding. As for differentiation, let’s not forget that Abram Games didn’t need to set the BBC apart from its competitors. After all, in 1953, there was only one channel. But the values it embodied were forward-thinking vision and creativity.

 

What about the more modern versions, and how do they relate to values? "With the BBC One balloon it's not obviously about a set of values,” admits Lambie-Nairn. “But it's just a really classy piece of work which is about the love of our own country... and that can't be bad, can it?"

by Ashley Morrison

Ashley is a copywriter, editor and blogger

Follow him on Twitter

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