Design & Branding – Ben remembers…

It was a Saturday in 1997 and I’d been watching Live and Kicking as was the norm. I sat through the trailers looking at this logo staring at it and thinking to myself how old fashioned it looked then up came the announcement into the news and there it was an orange and red balloon.

At the time I was just starting to really get into TV branding and noticing it far more than I ever had. BBC One had used a numeral as a logo and a really abstract spinning globe but this new balloon, complete with its atmospheric sound track just seemed so dated an boring.

But then it wasn’t designed to appeal to an 11 year old particularly. What it did do though was give the channel a mascot of sorts, the balloon was a real thing and it flew over real locations in hindsight it was a smart was to move on from the spining globe that had been in use for decades.

While I didn’t think it that great at the time that balloon was a strong identity and memorable to the point I can remember where I was and the order I watched things happen in the day it arrived.

Your own memories of this will vary but I grew up in the South of England. The days of there only being a handful of channels seems so long gone now but I do firmly remember the days of only having four TV channels – we could never get channel 5 down our aerial and didn’t have satellite or cable either.

I have plenty of memories of Meridian, the logo being quite distinct and even to this day an unusual one for a TV station and the theme tune too was always very memorable.

As a child I remember Meridian coming on the air but I had no real knowledge of what a Meridian was or why it was relevant (or not) it was just the name of the local TV station.

That logo, was it a face or a sun and moon?

As I grew older I started to notice the different TV companies logos at the end more and more and wonder what those TV stations looked like but it would be years later and the arrival of the internet before I would discover a whole new world (and personal interest).

I’ll probably revisit this subject again as the world of television really did become an increasingly strong interest of mine down the years but in the meantime I’ll just leave this logo firmly from the past and what now seems like a bizarre time when there was more than one ITV.

This can takes me back. It was the mid-90s and I was just entering double figures. I was on my first away from home school trip and in the canteen area there was a vending machine. If I remember correctly it featured this same design.

Fizzy drinks were for me something I would only have as a treat, they were a real rarity. But here I was away from home, with spending money and sure enough by the end of the week I was hooked.

I can’t say for sure that this was my first taste and the flavour of Cherry Coke is definitely a bit Marmite, you either love it or hate but I am definitlely in the former and in my head I link it all to this can design.

Why Coca-cola used such an off-brand design is a mystery but it certainly appealed to me at that young age and the vivid design is still sitting vividly in my memory today.

These days of course it is Coca-Cola Cherry and fits in with a ton of other flavour combinations all look the same and perhaps less appealing to the ten year old still in me.

Category: Design & Branding

The Day the BBC One balloon took flight

When ITV was called Meridian

When Cherry Coke looked like this…