The idents The story behind the '2's This feature is an adapted transcript of an item originally broadcast by the BBC1 programme 'How Do They Do That?' on 15th February 1995. This is the tale of 2 - of the BBC2 identification logo. But how was 'TWO' elbowed aside by the wonderful '2'? 
"I realised there was a problem almost as soon as I took over the channel," says former controller of BBC2, Alan Yentob (below). "It was obvious that the logo made no impact - it was singularly unmemorable, and told you nothing about the personality of the channel. So we decided to commission some research." 
When the research came back, the BBC were very surprised - it told them that the audience thought BBC2 was dull and worthy. So how did they go about changing people's perceptions? They invented an entirely new '2', more in step with the programmes themselves, and with a personality of its own - hopefully witty, decidedly unusual. 
The '2' shape was specially designed for the channel by corporate design company Martin Lambie-Nairn. You may think there is nothing particularly special about the '2' - but there is something special. It's a very distinctive '2', rather nice and fat with lots of sharp edges. They needed lots of '2' - lots of 'body' of '2' - in order so that they could do 'things' with it. The familiar greeny-blue colour was featured in the first batch of '2's in 1991, and became a standard component in subsequent designs to aid identification. But never mind the colour - how did they do this? 
They turned the camera and the model '2' on their sides, and filmed paint dropping from a height; so when the film was played the right way up, the paint appeared hurtle in from the side. But the latest episode in the tale of '2' needed a more complicated set-up, to produce a steaming '2'. As well as the idea of the surprise of the water turning to steam on an object that didn't look hot, they wanted to have the water coming in from every angle. This proved to be the main problem - designing a rig to be suspended above the '2', allowing water to be released and splash down on cue. In the event they came up with quite a complicated Heath Robinson device; a circular rig with a series of valves right the way round it. The drops of water were controlled by opening and closing the valves as required. The camera lens was placed in the centre of the device, shielded from the water, and this is what it saw:  
Another new ident hot off the press is called 'Diary'. The final piece may only be on screen for a few seconds, but it took days to produce. They used a piece of fish wire attached to each paper '2', with an undercurrant of air, so that when the wire was pulled the '2' would come forward on a jet of air. The original aim was to pull ten '2's off in rapid succession, but things ended in a bit of tangle! Even pulling off two or three at a time resulted in a lot of crossed wires - ten proved impossible to co-ordinate. So they cheated, by repeating the original shot over and over again.  
How the '2's were filmed is not the whole story - every '2' has specially composed music or sound effects behind it. The music between each ident was created by a particular theme. The fantasy behind 'Silk' was a seascape; the silk became billowing waves, and the '2' became a sunken ship, complete with piping aboard, a ship's bell, and ghostly feelings like whales in the water. 
The theme surrounding 'Firecracker' was that this was a heath after a battle, with heather and smoke around. A deep orchestral texture was required for this; the firecracker itself was felt to be rather Chinese, so they used some Chinese gongs; and to counteract this rather alarming violent feeling, a windchime was used to play a waltz through it. 
Once all the instruments were recorded, the sounds were fed into a computer which combined them to produce the final effect. So how successful was the new look? Six months after the first research, they tested the audience reaction. All the negative perceptions had disappeared entirely, and the channel was now felt to be sophisticated, witty and amusing. And how does the BBC feel about the '2' they've unleashed? "We feel it's taken on a character of its own; it's started to come alive, and we see it as the hero of the piece. People love the '2' - it receives lots of fan mail and correspondence, and we'll definitely be renewing its contract!" 
Copyright © BBC 1995 The idents The story behind the '2's | 
