Unit 32 Assignment One - Task Two

Television idents may have limitations when creating them for example:

Typography - The Art of Written Language, can be limited when creating idents for television channels as one particular set of font has been introduced into an ident you begin to associate a channel with a type of font like the BBC for example.
BBC One, Two, Three and Four have really similar idents with the typography however they still have certain differences despite the similarites for example BBC One has lower case letters the same with BBC Three whilst BBC Two and BBC Four have capitals. BBC Two and Three even have BOLD letters whilst the other two don't. Even though the typography of the idents are limited doesn't mean they can't be creatively different whilst having similarities.

Adhering To A Desired Tone - A channel tends to have the idents have the same tone, for example the BBC four idents have the peaceful four image show or CBBC has the green children style idents. This tone is to familiarise the audience to the channel and can be used to keep the appropriate audience for their channel to continue watching without turning to another channel. The peaceful suite of idents tend to be more popular with the working class people who seem to just want to sit down and relax after a long day of work for example and energetic suite of idents like the BBC One Rhythm and Movement suite would want the watcher to want to watch people move around and be more ecstatic. The BBC Four idents are more peaceful and would suite the more intellectual people that have had a long day at work and just want to relax and watch something calm. BBC Four follow a four image layout that people would move between and would disappear, the movements of the ident are slow and fluid and are often set in areas that would appeal to the more intellectual audience.
Colour - This can be really limiting when creating idents as a channel because once an ident has a coloured theme the colour begins to become associated with the channel for example BBC One has the Red theme and BBC Two has the Blue/Green theme. Other notable coloured channels is E4 which is purple or even BBC Sport which is yellow. This can be great for channels as when viewers have seen the channel before they will associate the colours with the channel and psychologically be reminded to watch the channel when seeing the coloured theme. E4 for example when having their idents shown on their channel they would always include the purple colour throughout the ident which is their coloured theme, this is so that when people notice the colour purple in real life or other channels they would be reminded to switch onto E4 to check what shows could be on to watch.
This allows for creativity when creating idents as they would have to include the coloured theme and can do it in creative ways. The BBC have done a great job by gently adding in the red theme in their idents by having people waving red cloth around for example.
In the video above you can see how all the idents of BBC one from 2002-2006 have a red coloured theme. In this video you also can notice how the idents are all pretty similar and have the same tone.
Aspect Ratio - Every ident is created to have the 16:9 aspect ratio, the reason for this is so that it can fit perfectly onto all the modern televisions without having the ident to be only half seen by having it distorted off screen. All modern high definition televisions can view the 16:9 aspect ratio without adding any black box to fill up space on the screen.

As you can see in the picture above each ratio fits onto different television screens for example the 4:3 ratio was for box televisions from 1990 televisions. 16:9 is the ratio that fits for modern HD televisions.