BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster founded in 1922. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation.

1958–1963


The first incarnation of the BBC "blocks" logo was created in 1958. This logo consisted of square boxes with "BBC" in italics inside them. In 1953, Abram Games was commissioned to design an on-air image. The font used would be Univers, which was created in 1957.

1963–1971


On 30 September 1963, the boxes were also made slanted like the letters. This type of logo would go on captions at the end of productions as well as on cameras and other equipment. 1964 saw the creation of both of its channels BBC1 and BBC2, with the distinctive horizontal stripes across the screen.

1971–1992
In 1971, a new logo was made by rounding off the boxes, making the spaces between them larger. A corporate identity was getting more and more essential to ensuring that the audience knew it was authentic and that the quality programmes they were watching could be attributed to the BBC. This logo continued to be used alongside the next logo until 1992.

1988–1998


In May 1988, the BBC launched yet another new logo, designed by Michael Peters. The logo was modified by sharpening up the parallelogram edges again and set to an angle of 17 degrees without reducing the size of the spaces between the boxes. The text was also sharpened up to make it match the clarity of the logo itself - the typeface used was 'Helvetica Neue'. Also, under-logo lines were added for the first time. These lines were coloured blue, red, and green to reflect the flags of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as the three phosphors of colour television. From October 1997 this logo continued to be used as an in-credit logo and with the BBC Radio Clwyd logo until the radio station eventually shut down in August 1998.

1997–2021


On 4 October 1997, BBC launched a new identity, designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn.

The under-logo lines of the 1988 logo were removed from the logo, the boxes and letters were also straightened up, making the boxes look similar to the 1958 logo. The typeface used is Gill Sans, made by Eric Gill in 1926. BBC1 and BBC2 were also renamed BBC One and BBC Two. By the end of 2002, most services were using a different design with the logo and name on top of each other in a box. This logo is the longest-lived in the history of the BBC, having been used for more than two decades.

Since 2017, BBC is slowly replacing Gill Sans with BBC Reith Sans and Serif, with the first being BBC Sport, followed by BBC Alba, BBC Studios after its merger with BBC Worldwide, then BBC Two's rebranding, then BBC Scotland's channel launch, then BBC News, the news channel, BBC World News, and most recently, BBC Radio and BBC Local Radio.

2021-present


Sometime in 2021, the BBC is expected to rollout a refresh of the Lambie-Nairn logo. The iconic boxes are subtly squared up and spaced outwards. The lettering is in BBC Reith, the BBC's proprietary font, introduced in 2017 and designed by Dalton Maag. The rebranding was soft-launched in early 2021 internationally through BBC Studios's streaming service BBC Select in North America, and BBC Kids in Australia.

1927–1988


Shortly after receiving its first Royal Charter in 1927, the BBC was granted its own armorials by the College of Arms.

The British lion forms the 'crest' of the arms, and the thunderbolt it holds is a heraldic way of representing broadcasting. The eagles form the 'supporters', and represent speed, while the bugles they wear round their necks symbolize public proclamation.

On the shield is the globe surrounded by seven stars, which represent the other seven planets in the Solar System and hence reflect the scope and breadth of the Corporation. Finally, the motto, "Nation shall speak peace unto nation", is based on verses from the Old Testament (Micah 4:3 and Isaiah 2:4).

1988–present
An updated Coat of Arms was introduced with the underlined BBC logo (see above) in 1988, retaining all the properties of the original arms but making them appear more defined.