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5. SUMMARY

   This paper has the purpose of providing us with knowledge about how to design a brand identity for television, particularly, for the Slovene national television with it's first and second programs.

   The first part of the analysis is an attempt for theoretical background. We define the basic concepts about the relationship »viewer – television« considering the theory of dispositive presented and developed by Melita Zajc (based on Baudry's and Foucault’s concepts) in her book Invisible Tie, 1995. Dispositive is a specific configuration of discourses in the act of interaction of a subject with a technology. There are mutual effects: the subject manipulating the technology enables its existance, whereas the technology implies a specific subject position, from which only the manipulation is possible, whence the technology constitutes the subject. In our case we have the viewer and the broadcasting television. The mechanisms of interaction are the renaissance perspective, which guaranties the effect of realism (of what we see on TV), and the simultaneity of perception among the isolated subjects (at their homes watching), which constitutes a community of them analogous to the national community. The crucial point in the program of a national television is the TV News or World Report, since this is the point of totalising view over the world, the point on which the nation finds its place in the world and hence perceives itself as a subject.

   The second part of this paper is the analysis of collected material of Slovene television graphics (as provided by their archives) from the beginnings to the present time production. Our observation and comments are based on Zajc's models of interpretation (the first station ident and the first news opening graphics) and on art theory. We trace the development of television graphics from the typographical characteristics of early still texts and images on cardboard, than we follow the experimentation (in the sixties and seventies) in op-art and positive-negative effects in early animations, proceed with first oscilloscopic and video manipulation of TV signal, also comment on the first computer graphics and finish up-to-date when all the principles can be found mixed up. Our conclusion is that Slovene national television never really had a brand identity or even a permanent logotype except for the one by Grega Košak from 1969. The next mayor contribution to our television graphics was in 1972 by Peter Skalar (op-art) and by Jože Spacal from late sixties on in television set decoration (video art which was than introduced also to the field of television graphics). In late seventies, Miki Muster did the best classical animation: a very popular set (for advertising brake and children’ evening cartoon) with white rabbits. The children program had a powerful identity made out mostly of non-animated graphics in almost poster form (collage techniques) in the eighties, by “Novi kolektivizem”, with the symbol of electrical magic hat. As a counterpart to vivid illustration than seemed the identity of the news program in minimalist grey tones and reduced movement. In the last decade nothing significant was done (none of the brand identities from the contest in 1993 was ever realised), pure chaos dominated all over and in 1997 finally The Department for Television Graphics was founded for the first time and the television decided to have developed its first up-to-date corporate identity. Which never happened since in the plentiful production now chaotic principles took over again despite some isolated positive efforts.

   From the experience of the history of television graphics on Slovene television we could not gain any knowledge about the systems of corporate identity as manifested on TV screen. But it was necessary to recognize the mayor icons, symbols and motifs that were used by our television in order to be able to critically decide on what symbol to choose for our solution. Specifically, our television is very well associated with the Kalin's sculpture of The Shepard Boy, which has been manipulated in all possible ways from the very beginning of the television in 1958. But which is unsuitable as a small symbol on the screen with low resolution that TV has.

   The third part of our analysis was the comparison of different corporate identities of foreign televisions: BBC1, BBC World, CNN, ORF1, ORF2, RAI1, RTL, HRT1, SLO1, SLO2, A kanal, POP TV. We compared the television graphics that appeared in the program time from 18.30 till 21.30 hour. Different types of television graphics were counted and categorized according to their function: ID (station ident), programme previews, programme schedules, advertising brake openings, news programme graphics (news, sport, weather forecast, business report openings). The results were various - simple or more complex constellations of the elements of identity. Of mayor importance are the relations between the elements, the structure they build with their partial contributions, not just the excellence of single cases of graphics. At last, the relation between the identities of the first compared to the second program of same television must be well determined. This problem was discussed by designer Martin Lambie-Nairn in his autobiographical book Brand Identity for Television: With Knobs On for the case of BBC1 and BBC2. We will have to consider this for the relation between the first and second program of our national TV. What we also discovered to be of mayor importance is the pronounciability of the name of the television since it often appears in IDs. Of course, our television for the last decade has no proper name, at least not properly signed with the abbreviation SLO. In the near future the official abbreviation for telephone and web communication will become SI, therefore we find it suitable for the television communication, too. In the form of logotype SI1 or SI2 it could successfully appear on the TV screen and be internationally recognizable and well pronounced.

   The results of all three steps of our analysis – the theory of dispositive of national television, analysis of Slovene production of television graphics through its history and analysis of foreign television graphics at present time - are the guidelines for the practical part of our project, actually designing the corporate identity for TVSI. We have already decided on the logotype, which will be written in Helvetica, a type that is and has been very popular in Slovenia. The secondary typography is chosen for texts on the screen: to this purpose Isonorm is well suited. In the more decorative italic form for printed media we have Weidemann. The first program’s colours are hot, especially very intensive red combined with violet, whereas for the second program the whole cold part of the spectrum is available, with light green for the number in logotype. The three primary colours for the whole television are thus red, green and of course blue. They appear in the rectangle (proportion of the TV screen 4:5) attached to the logotype in different applications.

   However, the fundamental concept behind our brand identity evolves from the logic of video montage, the basic language of television technology before being integrated into broadcast television dispositive. This means that we will make use of video tape as artistic media, basically tied to VCR playback, and transplant these forms of communication onto broadcast television, of course profiting by they being connected to the same material presence, the television screen. In our case we’ll integrate into brand identity the maximum performance of the artistic use of television screen and thereby eliminate misalliances between broadcast television and decorative arts. There is no need for decoration, particularly in the form of the illusion of three-dimensional features. It doesn’t mean that we reject the film nature of documentary footage, it only emphasizes that there are also other modes of communication in the broadcast television media apart from those being identified with camera view. Our use of multiple screens and composite image basically stresses the limits of renaissance perspective in the television media. However, it must be made clear that the “field of exteriority” of the cinematic frame isn’t the same in the case of cinema and television, either in the form of video art or broadcast television. The information in the form of multiple simultaneous screens is intensified, given different perspectives, of higher density, and this offers and demands new modes of decoding the audio-visual material from the viewer. Our task is also to educate the viewer to see more and different, to heighten our common visual culture instead of succumbing to numbness.

   Now, let us describe the actual visual form of our brand identity. The most significant are programme preview graphics since they have a specified content and the purpose to convince the viewer to watch the program they advertise. They are the mediators between their primarily cinematic content and the ways of communicating it through video montage. For SI1 we decided for a screen in the screen, whereas for SI2 the two screens are placed side by side. With the position of the two screens are determined the basic strategies for typographic compositions. These are applied in programme schedules and other applications (printed media). The IDs are composed primarily of flat colours, the theme for SI1 is the silhouette Shepard Boy, animated through basic anamorphosis of two-dimensional plane in space, whereas the theme for SI2 is exercise (sport being a mayor content of this program), also made two-dimensional through video colorization. The initial, programme opening graphics is very simple, made of abstract forms and movements, since the more complex visual sintagms are handed over to The Video Gallery, where video artists can exhibit their videotapes.