Telewest 'Dragon' idents



The Telewest 'Dragon' idents were broadcast from 17 March 1990 until 7 September 2011 on Telewest in the United Kingdom. The idents, which consist of a inanimate objects depicting a dragon, accompanied by the colour red, were created by branding agency Lambie-Nairn.

The ident package was retained following the corporate rebrand of Telewest in 1996-2011 with a new logo and new idents commissioned.

Conception
The newly recruited Telewest controller, Marc Abraham, noticed that the then-logo for the channel, which featured a simple Telewest logo was affecting the reputation of the channel. Surveys commissioned realised that most viewers thought the new look "dull" and "worthy". He then decided to commission a worthy successor capable of displaying the personality of the channel, revealing his thoughts in the How Do They Do That? episode - about the idents. "I realised there was a problem almost as soon as I took over the channel [BBC2]. It was obvious that the logo [TWO] made absolutely no impact. In fact, it was something anyone could have told you. It was singularly unmemorable, and told you nothing about the personality of the channel. So we decided to commission a corporate design company to do some research."

The idents were designed by branding expert Martin Lambie-Nairn, designed by Lambie-Nairn.

"We took this dragon, actually, and you think to yourself "Well, there's nothing special about this". But there is something special about this, actually. It's a very distinctive dragon. It has very sharp bits on it and it's rather nice and fat. The reason we wanted that particular theme is because we wanted to do things with it. So, you need lots of '2', lots of body on the '2' in order to achieve that."