BBC defends logo revamp that critics think looks exactly the same

A BBC logo redesign has been mocked for looking like a poor imitation of the previous one.

The world-famous BBC blocks logo, which features each of the broadcaster's letters in its own square, has undergone a refresh, but to the untrained eye it would be difficult to see much of a difference.

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Its new logo looks very similar, only with a slightly different font, smaller letters and larger gaps between the blocks.

Reviewing the changes to the logo, TV analysts Clean Feed wrote: "Hardly a radical change by any stretch. But does the new logo merely look like a poor imitation of the existing one?

"This new blocks logo doesn’t appear to be solving any obvious problem. It will be seen as change for change’s sake. It just looks like a badly executed mock-up of the current logo."

The redesigned logo has been available to view on the BBC Select website, the corproration's streaming service for the US and Canada, since late last year, but apparently won't be launched fully until the autumn.

As well as the main logo, other services such as BBC News, BBC Sport and BBC One are expected to unveil new logos, too.

Other critics were also unimpressed, with The TV Forum tweeting: "Main issue with new BBC logo isn't even the already dated font, it's the proportions of the thing. A completely unbalanced, objectively bad piece of design. It'll prob be quietly dropped in a year or two."

Someone else tweeted: "I get its been 25 years, I get Gill Sans is, ah-hem, questionable, but this felt like one of those logos that would be around forever. Every BBC logo up until 1996 looks like a prototype for the 'right' one. Never mind the new c**p typeface what on earth is with the spacing."

Another person commented: "Seriously?! The new logo looks almost identical. I don't even know which is the old and which the new."

This will be the first time that the logo has changed since 1997, and others tweeted to share their favourite BBC logos from times past.

Responding to criticism of the updated logo, the BBC told The Sun: “We are using our own font — which we own the intellectual rights to — when we update content or BBC products.

“It would be wrong to suggest the costs of the design of the blocks was significant.”

The new font used is called BBC Reith and is named after BBC founder John Reith.

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