BBC Politics Live

A graphic identity refresh for BBC Politics Live; our team worked on a complete overhaul of the original identity it launched with in 2018, ensuring it followed Atlas guidelines – a BBC News design system. Over the course of four months, this major project was a collaboration between Graphic and Motion Designers, TV Engineers, Set Designers, Editorial and BBC Executives.

The new design needed to strike a careful balance: warmer, more inviting and accessible than its predecessor, while still retaining the polish and authority expected of a political programme which delivers reactive, often hard-hitting news. The producers wanted the show to maintain their core audience while inviting new, younger viewers, and to introduce daytime tv elements more often seen in talk shows.

Editorial and Marketing posed the question: What does politics mean visually? Our response was to build a system that feels human and open, focusing on the everyday people and places of which politics ultimately effects – to put people a the centre of the conversation.

My role focused on developing initial concepts and overseeing the digital application of the design suite. This included ensuring the system was modular, scalable and accessible across platforms. In Figma I created a range of components and design templates, enabling ease of use for non-designers to create assets for social and web.

The studio and motion application was led by a colleague, allowing us to tailor each output to its environment while maintaining a unified identity. As the motion side utilised stretching circular forms, I adapted this to the static, digital templates by creating a kit of parts that included gradient filled circles and lozenges which interact with the image subject, the aim of which was to capture a sense of movement and depth in the images.