Channel 4 iconic idents

One of Channel 4's many iconic idents.

Channel 4 are well known for having the most visually stunning and iconic television idents of this generation. However, this week the company have decided to scrap these and introduce a more incongruous and seemingly irrelevant selection of clips which can barely be recognised as idents.

This is the first major rebrand of the channel in ten years and many don't feel it is a necessary one; their idents never really seemed dated.

In the new idents, the short clips don't even feature the number 4, which is actually the whole purpose of an ident; to remind the viewer what they are watching. Instead the short clips are incredibly ambiguous short films featuring dancing puppet-like creatures or monkeys blowing up a mountain.

One of Channel 4's new idents.

Chris Bovill and John Allison, heads of in-house agency 4Creative defended the idents saying “We didn’t want to tell people what channel they’re watching. We wanted to tell them why they’re watching it in the first place".

It's certainly an ambitious change and one that is certain to have a split verdict. I personally preferred the use of landscapes to embody the 4 logo in their original idents, but that's just me.