What Is An Ident?

For the 'Applied' brief, we were giving three options to work from. These included doing a 'title sequence' for a book that has not been adapting into a movie yet, make 2 idents from a selection of 4 television companies, or make a short animated film that develops awareness for a certain campaign. I thought that the 'Ident' brief sounded most appealing to me personally, and I was actually really excited about it. However I found out that I didn't know much about what the actual purpose for an Ident was and that they are actually everywhere and are deeply thought about pre-production.

One key purpose for an Ident, is to help regulate the scheduling on that particular channel. For example if a programme has overrun or quite the opposite, then an ident can help fill time between shows so that they are scheduled correctly. Expanding on this, it then provides a break for studio workers like News and sports channels, so that they can read over their lines/get familiar with commenting on breaking news. Idents in a way, are pretty clever and though they are very aesthetically stimulating, they have a deeper purpose.

Idents can also help provide information to those viewers who have just switched to that channel. For example, it helps create the right tone of the channel and reflect the programmes shown on it. If someone switched to a channel where there was an ident of different types of wildlife walking along a desert, then one could assume that the channel deals heavily with wildlife/animals/nature in general. 

The consistency of an ident is quite important as it helps distinguish a corporate identity. Since many television companies have online catch up websites, such as 'BBC iPlayer', then having an ident that reflects the channel can help create a brand that is displayed all over the world. Idents are a marketing opportunity, once an ident endorses its brand, audiences become more familiar with the style of the channel and with have associations and are more likely to visit that channel again/remember it.

Therefore now that i know a bit more about idents and their purpose, I am even more excited to make some of my own. I didn't know they were of that much importance, though I was aware of them previously and had admired those from 'MTV' and 'E4'. So hopefully I can take all these aspects into consideration and apply them to this brief!