Graphic Design in Television
1. The Box is Born
On the 27th January 1926 in Soho, London, John Logie Baird was making history by successfully demonstrating his primitive television system to a public audience. Almost eleven years later, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began broadcasting the world's first regular high-definition television service, on the 2nd of November 1936.
Television broadcasts were suspended with the outbreak of World War II. When they resumed in 1946, television started to become very successful, especially in Britain with coverage of the wedding procession of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947. Originally only available in London and the Home Counties, three new transmitters erected across the country between 1949 and 1952, and television soon became available to a greater number of people.
The increase of license holders required a greater range of programming but it also brought extra investment in the medium. It was as a direct result of this, that the setting up and gradual development of graphic design departments took place.
Graphic design's link with television however, began well before its launch in 1936.
Contemporary descriptions of Baird's 1926 experiments with television broadcasts reveal that he used a variety of graphic forms to test legibility, including type script. Graphics and television were thus linked from the point of inception.
(Crook 1986: 33)
Television Graphics
Essay written as part of my BTEC Foundation Art Diploma, and submitted early 1999.
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