Thursday, January 03, 2008

Sporting A New Look

If you happened to have watched our newscasts yesturday evening you may have noticed something looked different, and you would have been correct. We debuted a new graphics package on air yesturday, and I must say it is very cool.

A graphics package is often referred to as our “look”. Those graphics you see over anchors as they talk to you at home are part of the complete graphics package. The graphics that pop on and off the bottom of the screen with locations and reporter names etc are also a part of the complete graphics package. In short, our old look was ancient dated and needed to be redesigned.

The new graphics package is both crisp and bold. There is a heavy dominance of yellow/gold and blues to the new graphics but by far the biggest difference you will see is that all the new graphics are animated (meaning they move). The old look was static and had no animation.

A new graphics package is not unique. In fact, many news stations freshen up their graphics every 2 years by making slight alterations to the exisiting look. These are not usually drastic changes but rather offer a freshened up look to the existing package. However, in our case, we did a complete redesign. This is when you throw out everything related to your old graphic look and start from scratch.  Usually, TV stations do complete overhauls on their graphics packages every 3-4 years with refreshed looks in between.

So do you like the new look? Hate it? Let me know. Post your thoughts in the comments section.

-Jason
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