4. Annotated Research Ben Davis

1) BARB Viewing Figures

Here we can see that the mostly viewed programme in this particular week is The Big Bang Theory, with a huge 2,315,000 views with over one million more than its closest successor. This means that to achieve maximum views they would show The Big Bang Theory Lots of times. Also the same programmes got in the top ten despite the fact that they are both repeats. Hollyoaks is all together viewed the most because it is showed every night. This means that Hollyoaks is E4's most popular soap channel.

In this weeks top ten, Hollyoaks is the most viewed, followed by The Big Bang Theory once again. This backs up the fact that E4's most popular programmes are Hollyoaks and The Big Bang Theory, which means that E4 should show those the most to gain the most views. These statistics indicate that having an ident that reflects both comedy and more reality situations will work well with the majority of the viewers.

I used this research to help me find out the best target audience range for my logo and E4 rebrand. It is clear that the most watched programmes are the genres of comedy, soaps and reality. So I took this further and researched the statistics of who watch these sorts of channels the most, I found that it was equal on gender, and in terms of age it ranged from young adults to middle aged. So i will direct my E4 rebrand towards this audience range.

2) Corporate Identity of E4

Firstly it is important to look at the audience of E4, it is for predominantly aimed at working and middle class people between the ages of 16-34. This means that things that appeal to those who are in that age group will be effective in entertaining the audience. Another Corporate Identity aspect is the logo and colouring they use. The logo is unique to them and consist of the colours White and Purple, the core being Purple. This is a multi gender colour that appeals to both male and females. White is a plain colour which works well with purple.

E4 also has a new ego, a robot named Eefer, he represents the channel and has a body which is the E4 logo but has arms and legs. This is effective at gaining popularity because it makes people become emotionally attached to the character and therefor the channel itself. It is also effective because it has more of a personality than the previous logo, then making it more enjoyable to watch and more funny.

I am going to use this research to choose the particular theme and colour I'm going to use in my rebrand, the colours purple and white will stay the same, and I will change the logo to match the age range and broadcasting themes accordingly.


3) Previous E4 Idents

The idents E4 use are mainly set in British locations showing the unusual behavior of Eefer and the the members of the public. From this we decided that it would be appropriate to keep that general theme and make our ident set in an open location and doing an everyday activity with an E4 twist.

This Ident example is Eefer walking through a cafe, which in itself is a normal daily activity but the fact that Eefer is a robot in the shape of the E4 logo makes it surreal. So we've used this and adapted it to come up with our own surreal ident idea. I will use this research to make sure my ident is completely random and flexible to create other indents from it. I will be staying with the theme of an every day activity and then add a completely random occurrence to it. This will stick with the channels ethos and keep it funny.

4) E4 Themes.

The overarching theme that E4 puts out is comedy, with the majority of its broadcasted channels being comedy shows. This is also reflected on their idents, all of which make the audience laugh when watching them. Below are a few of the channels broadcasted on E4, and almost all of them are comedy. With this research I knew that I had to make the ident comedic, with a slight hint of drama, this is because the majority of channels are of those two genres.

5) E4 Style Guide

The style guide talks about various things to do with the channel, almost all of it being about the logo. Things include, the logo, the logo as a sticker, the size of the logo, the colour and the positioning. It also goes into the typography for the E4 channel as a whole. From their style guide we could get a good idea of how our logo and ident should look and be made. The colour purple was imperative to be used, so we made the main part of the logo Purple. Also the size was important, according to the style guide it could be no smaller than 8mm on the screen, this was to make sure everybody would be able to see the logo, so we have made it around half the size of an average person, this fits with our ident theme.



















I will use the style guide to help me get information about fonts, colours and other general information that I will involve into my ident. However, I will not stick with certain aspects, I will change the font to more childish, to reflect the type of comedy broadcasted.

6) Logopedia

I used Logopedia to help me get a brief idea of what sorts of logos are in use, showing me what to avoid and sometimes things that inspired me. The colour schemes of E4 logos in particular were always purple, meaning that I stuck with that theme, which reflects the E4 corporate identity theory. I looked at other logos, rather than just E4 ones. From this it helped me draw up several different drafts that I could perhaps develop on, and overall it helped me come to a conclusion.

7) Colour Conventions

The colour convention of E4 is Purple, the design of the logo itself is very very simple, just a 4 inside an E, as displayed in the image above. The colour purple is multi-gender because it appeals to both male and female viewers, therefor fitting in with E4's corporate identity theory. The colour purple is eye-catching for the audience, so naturally it attracts those who are less inclined to look into things with more detail (16-34). The design is so simple because it fits perfectly within the corporate identity theory. I used this research when choosing things like the colour scheme of my logo and ident itself.

8) Surveys

The final piece of research we decided to use was a personal survey that we had set up. This was to get an idea of what the members of the public would like to see. We made sure that we gave the survey to the correct age range of 16-34 year olds and both genders, meaning that only those who sat in the corporate identity theories target audience filled it out. Our results showed that the majority of people preferred the comedy side of the channel, despite this there still was a large amount of people that preferred the drama side. We asked questions like "What time do you normally watch E4" the results showed that the majority of people watched E4 at around 7pm - 11pm, which is actually prime time television. From this research we decided to make our ident mainly friendly to those who are more mature, meaning they can take the kind of humour E4 strive for.