NEWS – A CHANGING WORLD

Crisp solid colours of the news anchor work well with the studio tones.

When something ordinary and daily in your routines goes through a significant change, you realize in a simple way the ever-evolving, changing nature of life, and feel refreshed. Just as important as it would be for any person to change something in the rhythm or environment of their life every 5 to 7 years, it feels natural for the daily tv-news format and design to change, too, in similar intervals.
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The Finnish Broadcasting Corp., YLE, just launched an in-depth design renewal of its news broadcasts, both on tv and in radio (audio design included).

The massive undertaking has been in the works for three years now, and most active during the last two. Part of the conceptual and design team was brought out-of-the house: the London based agency The Council is specialized in broadcast design, the Helsinki based firms Fake Graphics in 3-d animation and Bob Helsinki in brand architecture. At € 600 000, the design bill doesn’t include YLE’s in-house personnel’s major efforts.

The result is like a breath of fresh air! Congratulations, YLE!

Sculptural furniture; the range of key colours.

The new concept and look work vividly and crisply with colours! The gentle sky blues, turqoises, off whites with leaf green details and other stronger accent colours are immediately refreshing and yet reliable. (They hint towards the ”blue and white” of the Finnish national colour combination, but aren’t as stark, and the blues on the tv screen are far from the -in reality- dusty-dirty blue of the Finnish flag.)

The studio has a great spatial impact. The furniture and the oversize screen frames have a highly stylized sculptural effect that imply to the scale of the WORLD behind the news. The streamlined design is both up-to-date and has a hint of the grandly styled, oversize movie sets of 1930′s Hollywood spectacles, with a touch of the yester-year designer-guru Raymond Loewy thrown in. The 3-d animations add to the elegant spatial feel.

Part of the energized atmoshpere of the new tv-news is due to the shifted importance of the news anchors. They no longer sit behind the desks but stand, and move. They are whole human beings, a bit of host’s duties added to their responsibilities, and it seems to work splendidly. Kudos to the styling of the outfits; solid colours and clear cuts emphasize the anchors’ personality and credibility, and work wonders in the overall colour design.

Streamlined design in sky blues and off-whites.

The anchors appear confident, appealing and very professional in this new environment; no need for ”celebrity status” anchors as with competing news programs.

Additional thanks for the new design of the weather forecast visual presentation and symbols. The crispier and well contrasting colours and smoothly styled elements land somewhere between cartoon design and fine art, never losing their vital way to carry information.

Watching the news on a 48 inch HD flatscreen, some of the title graphics and a few of the insert photos and film footage appeared not good enough in resolution.

 

Kirjoitettu Kirjoittaja Markku Piri