06 October 2007

[logo_design] It's New Logo Time In the Fisher Constellation

990. OMI today broke the news that, as far as anyone can tell, KATU's new logo shift (notied in the studio monitor at the legendary KATU Blogger meetup (which see, here too) is beginning to happen, if gradually. As mentioned at OMI, the new logo can be seen if you go to watch a show online; it's in the upper right of the viewing window. OMI has an actual-size version, and here's what it looks like when you blow it up a bit:


Another lesson in making your logo with resizing in mind. The image has fuzzed out a bit, since all I did was make a screen shot and blow it up in Photoshop, but detalis are still clear.

The most interesting to me was the treatment of the numeral 2, with its subtle oblique skewing and that interesting bevelling of the base stroke there on the right. the canted red square reminds one of the Fisher "Flag" logo, and the red color looks very close indeed.

Here's a before and after:

Your mileage may vary, but I think it's an improvement. Moreover, I like the movement from minisucle to majuscule (lower case to upper case) on the callsigen ("KATU" vs "katu"). The onld logo is strong, but it's locked down and static. The new logo, with the "airspace" all around and the tilted red tile, has dynamic tension and energy.

But it's not just KATU that's changing its look. Latterly, we've noted here that Idaho Falls's KIDK Channel 3, a CBS station, was changing its look as well. All kidding aside, it seems to be a bit of a movement amongst Fisher's Inland Empire; KBCI Channel 2, Boise, has a new logo treatment for its newly-renamed Eyewitness News flagship:

Earlier we notied, somewhat irreverently, that KIDK has a fearsome new logo that made us duck when we first saw it, with the tagline Watching Out For You. Notable, are general similarities in "eyefeel": the rectilinear block treatment, the same typefaces for the words. KBCI's logo differs in that it takes up less square footage, but the overall treatment is the same:

Notable also are the taglines. Sporting a similar red swipe underline, KBCI's tagline, Everywhere, can be actually combined with KIDK's to create a single thought: Watching Out For You Everywhere. These stations are getting just a little too friendly...

Seriously, though, yet another similar logo and graphics regime has surfaced in the Tri Cities and Yakima, where the Fisher affliates there, KEPR and KIMA respectively, have shifted to new logos and openings (though this alliance has retained the sobriequet Action News:

It should be noted that this Fisher shift to new logos is hardly uniform, While KATU and the Inland Empire stations seem to be going to a completely new look Seatlle's KOMO is going for a variation on the corporate theme, and KLEW (Lewiston ID) as well as the Eugene and southwest Oregon stations seem to be standing pat for now with the "old" look.

FWIW, the new graphics regimes can be seen by going to each stations site (If I missed a link, go to the station's pages via the Fisher Communications' "Our Stations" page) and digging through the video clips.

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