Successful and Unsuccessful idents

Idents are small advertisements that market a channel. They have opportunities and limitations, these opportunities and limitations help and make and ident successful however they are also responsible for making idents unsuccessful as they limit some idents to explore.

Some of the opportunities that idents have are that they can create a corporate identity and a tone for the channel this is a good opportunity which can make an ident successful as if gives the views and insight into what the channel is about and what it shows. You can also easily display text-based information; this is helpful as you are able to show visually information about the channel onscreen; this allows you to brand your channel. You also have the ability to appeal to your audience through many ways without out restrictions. Finally, by making a successful ident it encourages brand loyalty.

Like many things there are some limitations that must be thought of when designing idents, these are lings like the typography, resolution, colour and aspect-ratio. Typography is the font and size of the writing; you must ensure that the viewers are able to read it.  The resolution is the quality of the picture if it is too high of quality then it will take a lot of time to load, so therefore getting the correct files size is important.

‘UK TV GOLD’
You can get many successful and unsuccessful idents one that I have studied was the TV channel ‘Gold’. When studying this channels ident I come across an old ident and a recent ident and in which one was successful and one was not. The newer gold ident is more successful as the newer one is more interesting and entertaining as there was a lot more going on screen: vibrant colours, different exquisite noises and lots of movement this is successful as it is appealing to the eye which attracts a wider audience.
The older ident is really unsuccessful as there are not many good features. The old ident didn't really show any form of identity. The density of information was very minimal, there was not verbal information and the visual information was poor. In the ident the interaction with the viewers was very minimal will little to no interactions with the audience, all these aspects and many more made this ident unsuccessful.



'DAVE’
Another channel in which I have analysed if the idents were successful or not was the TV channel ‘Dave’. Dave’s newest ident is a successful ident. This is because it is interesting and entertaining, this is due to the up beat music in which is played in the ident, and the people running about. The colour red it used in the ident a lot, the colour red is appealing to the eye, which helps to make this a successful ident. The colour red could have been used for the connotations that go with it, the main one that springs to mind when thinking of the connotations of red is love, red may have been used not only because there may be love programmes shown on that channel but instead to show the love the viewer may have for the channel which increases the loyalty the viewer has for the channel. 

The older ‘Dave’ ident is called ‘the human cannonball’ this ident was unsuccessful. In the ident there is very limited sound and visual information, this is easy to see as during the ident, the verbal information gave more information on the next programme that was being show rather then showing the identity of the channel. The composition of the ident is unbalanced. This ident will not appeal to many audiences as many audiences would prefer to see an up-beat ident which shows what is going on in the ident and what the channel is likely to show.

‘NatGeo Wild’
The final channel in which I am going to analyse is the channel ‘NatGeo Wild’ the older ident is the least successful. The ident was show in 2009 and was called ‘jungle ident’. The reason for this ident being the least successful is due to the fact that in the ident the animals are fake, this gives the viewers a bad impression of the programme as they may fell that the information and programmes the channel are going to show may be fake also. The verbal information to visual information ratio is very limited however there is more visual information, as there is no verbal information throughout the whole ident. The visual information is limited because it doesn’t explain much about the channel as it only shows 3 animals separately moving through the jungle, this doesn’t give the viewer much of an insight to the types of programmes that the channel shows. The composition of the ident is unbalanced. 

The newer ‘NatGeo Wild’ ident isn’t massively successful but in comparison to the first one it is more successful. The new ident is called ‘The Land Animals’ ident this is more successful as the wild is in the middle this shows that you will always be in the middle of all the action is you watch this programme. The video inside and behind the writing shows that if you watch this channel you will see what not many people get to see, this symbols that there is a lot more to the wild than what a lot of people think. There is a lot of visual information in this ident, as you see animals in their natural habitat, which you do not see everyday. I feel that the composition of this ident is balanced, as there isn’t too many things going on at one time.