Concept and creative process
The branding consultants Lambie-Nairn, together with Aardman Animation, produced the channel idents for BBC Three from the launch of the channel in 2003 until 2008. Stefan Marjoram at Aardman Animations had developed the character of the ‘Blobs’ which was adapted by Lambie-Nairn, with the addition of the monumental Three logo in the background, to create the new channel ident. Gary Holt was the Creative Director and Matt Penney was the Design Director for Lambie-Nairn, and it was he who trawled through the BBC Sound Archive for odd sound bites which, when taken out of their original context, sounded completely bizarre and became the script for the the ‘Blobs’. This was a technique pioneered by Aardman with great success on their earlier animation series ‘Creature Comforts’.
All of the ‘Blob’ idents were computer-generated by Aardman Animation and the design concept won the Design & Art Direction Yellow Pencil Award for Outstanding Television Graphics/Brand Identity 2004.