Concept and creative process
Designer Iain Macdonald recalls the making of ‘Holiday 89’: “This was my first BBC title sequence. I joined the BBC in September 1987 and one of my first jobs, under my Senior Designer, Charles McGhie, was to service the weekly magazine 'Holiday '88'. The titles for that year had been designed by Senior Designer Sid Sutton, and I was given a pile of his cardboard captions for insert graphics (maps, ticket prices, news items etc) and given the job of designing new digital graphics on the Quantel Paintbox that sat taking pride of place in our studio. The following year I managed to persuade the 'Holiday' executive producer, Patricia Houlihan (and not least graphics progress chaser Mary Griffiths and Graphic Design Manager John Aston) to let me design a new title sequence for 1989. I wanted to embrace the digital look, and the animated work that Chris Tucker was creating on an Amiga computer caught my eye. He followed my hand-drawn storyboard and added some of his colourful magic, inspired in part by David Hockney's swimming pool paintings. The rendered animation and live action shots, selected from the show's rushes, were composited using a Quantel Harry. The titles were much loved by the production team and ran with new live action footage each year, until Christine Buttner's title sequence replaced them. I think by then the pixel aesthetic had worn thin and Christine brought a softer, more humanistic and expressive opening title and graphics to the programme.”