The arrival of colour in 1970 saw the ITV companies re-evaluate their on-screen identities, bringing colour into the equation, and abandoning the nautical theme.
For Tyne Tees this saw the replacement of the original triple-T logo, and replaced by the interlinked design with which the company is strongly associated with to this day.
Despite being replaced in 1992, the basic layout of two TT sat above TV has remained ever since and is still used for Tyne Tees’s production arm.
The ident also introduced the blue and yellow colour scheme that would remain in use for many years to come. Dark blue was a popular colour for the background to idents at the time, being also used by ATV, Border and HTV amongst others, and would have the benefit of approximating to a near black on a black and white television. Lighter colours would have resulted in a more washy grey colour on screen - less impressive it has to be said.
This particular ident, introduced in 1970, features the word ‘COLOUR’ underneath the station logo. The full animated ident, complete with a rather trumpetty jingle, featured and red diamonds morphing into ‘COLOUR’.
The animated ident was rarely used, Tyne Tees preferring to use this static caption instead.
The caption had a number of differences to the ident:
- The kerning on COLOUR is tighter on the static caption.
- The Tyne Tees logo has been made bigger.
- The background is darker, and the TTTV logo yellow instead of orange.
- The join on the V is different.
The latter is especially interesting. As can be seen from the screen grap, the join of the T and the V lines up perfectly on the ident version, but on the static caption, it’s slightly lower on the left than it is on the right.
Interestingly it was the static caption version that would be used in the 1979 ident as well.
