At the beginning of this September Czech Television came up with the new design of its political talk-show “Otázky Václava Moravce“ (Vaclav Moravec’s questions). I am the regular viewer of this broadcasting and at the first-sight I was immediately impressed by its more dynamic face of the new design.
The previous abstract violet-colored animation was hardly understandable to me because of several reasons. The main problem was that the possibilities and capabilities of a virtual studio appeared not to be used as widely in comparison to the other broadcastings from this studio (e.g. “Objektiv” or Election studios). Abstract rings placed on the violet background made a very muzzy impression and I did not have a clear idea about what they represented.
When I saw the twisting globe for the first time I was pleased. It clearly communicated to me the immediate and non-complicated idea of its message, namely that the show will bring me the hottest global news, as well as the local coverage. Then the intro spontaneously came through the political imagery to the introduction of Václav Moravec, the talk-show speaker.
The light, dynamic design of the intro promised a nice visual experience of the usually boring and dry discussion. As interesting as the show appeared, my expectations were however slightly more fantastic. I had to remind myself that when thinking of the really effective animations used by CNN for presidental election in the USA 2 years ago and comparing them with OVM graphics I must accredit its aspirations to reach this level, but there is still a lot to gain. Anyway, this is the live show and in such a case the possibilities of the virtual studio are quite restricted. The graphics cover is limited to just several layers at various places, so the basic video and animation don’t give enough space for further creativity.
The first broadcasting surprised me with the fact that there was a lot of residue from the previous graphics design. Further weeks showed that such problems were becoming less and less . Topics divisions, tele-bridge looks as well as inserted headlines all already have the common visage, respecting the artistic concept of the intro. The pixelity of the main illustration in the middle showing the discussed topics is also the history and finally it doesn’t look unfinished. Although, I still can’t get used to the image of Prague projected behind the guests. Specifically in relation to the differences between the brightness of the particular panels the illustration is assembled from. However this is perhaps a matter relating to the people from television and not the authors of the new design.
As a regular viewer of this show I evaluate the new face highly positively. However there are still some extras which can be gradually removed. For example the font used for the intro and for the labels at the bottom of the screen does not match with the font used at the panels to show the topics headlines and citations of the people outside the studio. I will welcome the increased graphics and animated components to show the quantitative information of the discussed topics – pie graphs, bars or schemes, as can be seen on BBC or CNN.
The new design for “Otázky Václava Moravce” was delivered for Czech Television by the creative group Kufej Fejku – director Adrian Kukal and graphics designer Ond?ej Pfeiffer. They aim to co-operate with the authors of “Otázky Václava Moravce” show and want to go ahead to improve the design on a continual basis. I wish them well and I am curious about where they will take it in the future and to see everything that they are able to bring us, even with their technical limitations.