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Martin Lambie-Nairn

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Martin Lambie-Nairn
Martin Lambie-Nairn in 2008
Born
Martin John Lambie

(1945-08-05)5 August 1945
Croydon, London, England
Died25 December 2020(2020-12-25) (aged 75)
England
EducationCanterbury College of Art
OccupationDesigner
Years active1965–2020
Known forChannel 4 "Blocks" logo
BBC1 "Virtual Globe"
BBC Two 'The 2s' idents
The Personality 2s
Rhythm & Movement
BBC One 'Balloon' idents
Spitting Image
Spouse
Cordelia Summers
​
(m. 1970)​
Websitehttp://www.ml-n.com

Martin John Lambie-Nairn (5 August 1945 – 25 December 2020) was an English designer. He was the founder of his branding agency Lambie-Nairn and was the creative director of branding agency ML-N. He is recognised for having redefined television brand identity design, being the first to embrace computer technologies to apply branding to screen-based media.

Amongst his most prominent works are: the original Channel 4 logo and idents created in 1982; the batch of 30-plus idents for BBC Two that first aired on 16 February 1991; the 1997 corporate re-brand for the whole BBC and the 2008 BBC Regional News titles. In conjunction with his agency, he also created launch packages for certain other BBC channels.

Early life and education

Lambie-Nairn was born Martin John Lambie in Croydon and educated at Canterbury College of Art (later known as Kent Institute of Art & Design, now the University for the Creative Arts).[1]

Career

Early work

Lambie-Nairn's career in television began at the BBC in 1965, where he worked as an assistant designer.[1] Roles as a graphic designer at Rediffusion, ITN and London Weekend Television followed. At ITN, he worked on the on-screen graphics for the Apollo space missions and later designed the ITN corporate logo and title sequence for News at Ten.[2] Lambie-Nairn established his own company, Robinson Lambie-Nairn, with partner Colin Robinson in 1976 after leaving LWT,[1] and he went on to develop new graphic presentation techniques for Weekend World.[3] The business expanded and was renamed Lambie-Nairn & Company in 1990.[1]

Computer animation enabled him to produce what became regarded as a revolutionary identity[4] for Channel 4, the "Blocks" logo.[4] This identity launched the fledgling TV channel on 2 November 1982 and remained at the heart of the channel's on-air presentation for 14 years. In 1981 he created the original idea for the UK TV series Spitting Image which ran for 11 years. He received the credit that the show was "based on an original lunch with Martin Lambie-Nairn."[5][6]

Following Channel 4 and Spitting Image, he worked as a director of computer animated commercials, producing the first ever 30-second computer-generated TV advertisement in the UK, which was a commercial for Smarties.[7]

Corporate identities

In 1990, Lambie-Nairn became consultant creative director of the BBC brand, a position he held for 12 years. During this period[8] Lambie-Nairn and his company rebranded the BBC and all of its outputs, across all media. The best known channel identity was for BBC Two,[9] commissioned by then-controller Alan Yentob in a bid to make the channel appear less stuffy.[10] All of the idents in the first series employed traditional live action. Later, with the change of target audience, a new generation of idents was commissioned and produced using CGI.[10] The idents were highly popular, even receiving fan mail.[10]

For BBC1, Lambie-Nairn and Daniel Barber redesigned the globe identity, a well-recognised icon of the BBC, having been introduced in 1963.[11]

Later, Lambie-Nairn again redesigned the identity for BBC One – creating the red hot air balloon that was used for a new series of idents aired on BBC One from 4 October 1997. This aimed to capture the idea that the channel brought the whole world to every corner of the United Kingdom. He also co-conceived the Rhythm & Movement idents for BBC One first shown on 29 March 2002. In 2001, he created BBC Two's 2001–2007 Personality 2s series of idents, which featured robotic figure 2s, each displaying individual personalities, which went on the air on 19 November.[12] Lambie-Nairn also designed ident packages for BBC News 24 (now called BBC News),[13] BBC Choice,[14] CBeebies,[13] CBBC, BBC Four[15] and BBC Three.[14]

Throughout collaboration with the BBC, Lambie-Nairn and company also worked on other corporate identities for Carlton Television (now defunct),[16] Orange (now The Box),[17] the Disney Channel,[17] The Business Channel,[18] O2,[18] Alhurra[18] and many others. In 1997, he wrote Brand Identity for Television: With Knobs On.[19] He used the book to reveal how he and his colleagues achieved key identities.

In 2008, he created a new unified branding for BBC News.[20] The red and white template had videos of local landmarks, transport and people together etc.[21] The rebranding led to complaints that they may cause epileptic fits, a claim the BBC rejected as they had successfully passed the Harding test for photo-sensitive epilepsy.[20] They have since been replaced.[22][23]

Later years

In 2009 Lambie-Nairn left the practice he founded to join Heavenly as creative director, leaving in 2011.[24] He subsequently had his own consultancy, ML-N, based in London.[24] Through ML-N, he was appointed consultant creative director for the research company, TNS.[24] By 2016, he had joined Red&White as a non-executive chairman and creative director.[25]

Personal life and death

Lambie-Nairn died on 25 December 2020, aged 75. He was survived by his wife Cordelia (née Summers) whom he married in 1970.[26]

Awards

Lambie-Nairn was an RDI (Royal Designer for Industry),[27] Fellow of the Royal Television Society,[28] and an ex-president of D&AD. He received the D&AD President's Award, Prince Philip Design Prize, Promax Lifetime Achievement Award[29] and Promax Hall of Fame (USA). He also received a Gold D&AD for his work for Channel 4, multiple Silver D&ADs, a BAFTA[30] for his work for BBC2 and multiple Promax Awards.

Lambie-Nairn held an honorary doctorate of Arts from the University of Lincoln,[5] and was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design. He also held an honorary doctorate of Arts from the University of Northampton.[31]

Bibliography

  • Brand Identity for Television With Knobs On, Phaidon Press, 1997 ISBN 978-0-7148-3447-4

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "CRAFT: The man who made TV sponsorship idents sexy – PROFILE/Martin Lambie-Nairn has changed far more than TV logos, Belinda Archer says". Campaign. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  2. ^ "Pioneers". paulrobertlloyd.com. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
  3. ^ "Early Graphic Design in Television". Paul Rovert Lloyd. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  4. ^ a b "TVARK – Channel 4 – 1982". Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  5. ^ a b "UNIVERSITY HONOUR FOR 'SPITTING IMAGE' CREATOR". lincoln.ac.uk.
  6. ^ "qsulis.demon.co.uk". qsulis.demon.co.uk.
  7. ^ "Martin Lambie-Nairn, Smarties Commercial 1987".
  8. ^ "BBC – The BBC Story – The BBC logo story".
  9. ^ "BBC – Press Office – BBC ONE idents history". BBC.
  10. ^ a b c "Devising the 2". BBC. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  11. ^ "Global Ambition – History of the BBC". BBC. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  12. ^ "TVARK". TVARK. Archived from the original on 18 March 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2011.
  13. ^ a b "Martin Lambie-Nairn". Ravensbourne University. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  14. ^ a b Walker, Hayden. "BBC Choice". TVARK: The Online Television Museum. Archived from the original on 1 April 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2011.
  15. ^ "BBC Four Idents". TVARK. Archived from the original on 18 March 2012. Retrieved 31 July 2011. Contains videos of the idents.
  16. ^ "Carlton stars Lambie-Nairn". Design Week. 10 September 1999. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
  17. ^ a b deeman3000 (20 November 2011), Lambie Nairn Branding Film 1996, retrieved 6 October 2017{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ a b c "Martin Lambie Nairn Talk". Retrieved 6 October 2017 – via Vimeo.
  19. ^ "Brand Identity for Television: With Knobs On: Amazon.co.uk: Martin Lambie-Nairn, Jeremy Myerson: Books".
  20. ^ a b "BBC sanguine on claim that TV new rebrand causes fits". Design Week. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  21. ^ Horrocks, Peter. "New News". BBC.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  22. ^ "2019 Idents".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. ^ "TV news graphics: a new look". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  24. ^ a b c "Martin Lambie-Nairn steps down from Heavenly to revive ML-N". Design Week. 22 June 2011.
  25. ^ "Martin Lambie-Nairn on joining Red&White, the perils of expansion and the importance of kindness". Creative Review. 16 October 2015. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
  26. ^ "Martin Lambie-Nairn: Designer behind famous BBC and Channel 4 'idents' dies". BBC News. 28 December 2020. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  27. ^ RSA – Current Royal Designers Archived 27 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  28. ^ "RTS Archives – People – About – Fello". Royal Television Society.[permanent dead link]
  29. ^ "Inside Story: Martin Lambie-Nairn – King of the idents". 26 November 2007.
  30. ^ "Television Awards". bafta.org.
  31. ^ "Honorands 2010". University of Northampton. Retrieved 28 December 2020.

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