InTL. REVIEW BY Alexander Iosad POSTED BY Brand New

Russian TV, Squared

Russia 1 (Rossiya 1 in Russian, formerly simply Rossiya) is one of the main TV channels in Russia. Like much of Russian TV, it is controlled by the state – in this case through direct ownership, as it is a part of VGTRK (All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company). VGTRK also owns a number of other channels, and the new logos attempt to give a single identity to the company’s TV empire. They succeed – the new identity, unveiled just before the New Year’s Eve, is uniformly bland and uninspiring.

The announcement was made before a select group of journalists in the midst of holiday celebrations and was not accompanied by a press-release. The change of identity came together with a widening of format for two of the channels: Russia 2 (formerly Sport TV) and Russia K (formerly Kul’tura, or “Culture”). Presumably, the change of format triggered the re-design. The two other channels to share the identity are Russia 24 (a round-the-clock news channel, formerly Vesti) and RTR Planet (aimed at Russia speakers abroad, particularly in the former Soviet bloc).

Not to put too fine a point on it, the new design is bad. The other channels subjected to the re-design had similar logos before: the name of the channel in a decent sans-serif font with the flag of Russia in the top right corner. The new red-and-blue box, although it references the colors of the flag, doesn’t work as well as a symbol, and it’s very bulky — even more so as shown in the video above, where they take up far too much of the screen. The Web 2.0 gradients are, well, boring. The combination of stenciled numbers and the neutral sans-serif makes no sense. The variation in the height of numbers (compare “2” and “24”) is weird. The designers didn’t even attempt to go through with the stencils in every logo: the swirly “K” in “Russia K” aims literally to represent the nature of the channel, which broadcasts ballet performances and the like. If this “K” is culture, count me out. Finally, the logo for “RTR Planet” looks like they had forgotten about the channel altogether and had to do a logo in the five minutes before the presentation. Cue the stenciled RTR.

One last thing: as Russian bloggers were quick to point out, that stencilled ‘1’ looks an awful lot like the logo of Russia 1’s main competitor, the (also state-controlled) “Channel One”. I wonder what that is all about.

Thanks to Ivan Raszl for the tip.

\n\n

Russia 1 (Rossiya 1 in Russian, formerly simply Rossiya) is one of the main TV channels in Russia. Like much of Russian TV, it is controlled by the state – in this case through direct ownership, as it is a part of VGTRK (All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company). VGTRK also owns a number of other channels, and the new logos attempt to give a single identity to the company's TV empire. They succeed – the new identity, unveiled just before the New Year's Eve, is uniformly bland and uninspiring.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners