Really BAD Graphics

[Stanislav]

What are some examples of really amateurish, poorly made graphics (ID slides, titles and the like), especially from back in the day? You know -- hand-lettered or drawn cards, off-center or poorly registered titles, ID slides that were scratched and dented to within an inch of their life and yet continued to be used?

[This may be semi-OT as it involves a TP, but it's too funny not to mention. An old TV-DXing friend (long out of touch) who started his hobby in South Florida about half a century ago says he recalls receiving channel 4 in the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) by skip in the early 60's. This was a short time after the assassination of the notorious dictator Rafael Trujillo, who had renamed the city in his own honor, and just after the city had officially had its historic name of Santo Domingo restored. What he saw was a test pattern, on a card in front of the camera, on which the words "CIUDAD TRUJILLO" had been unceremoniously crossed out in black marker, and "SANTO DOMINGO" hand-lettered underneath.] ;D

 

[LKellerIII]

OK, I've got one...not amateurish, exactly, but truly awful, and I have the video evidence, courtesy of You Tube. For most of the 1970s, the highest rated TV news in the San Francisco Bay Area was Channel 7 News Scene. with Van Amburg. It got the credit for being a pioneer of the "happy talk" format, but they were also famous for sensationalist and bloody stories.

The graphics blue-screened behind the anchors was uniformly awful - in bright primary colors with poor comic-book caricatures of people. I remember reading at that time that they were "computer generated" graphics. If so, they were obviously very primitive. Even for the tasteless 70s, they were ugly.

This example features Van talking about Patty Hearst - with the predictable tacky graphic of Hearst. Also featured is some very clumsy camera work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nni8dYyEatY

 

[rwells2265]

Handwritten logos? Sure....

WLBT-TV/Jackson, Miss. in the 1960s: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Wlbt1960s.jpg

and, more recently, WAKA/Selma-Montgomery, Ala. from roughly 1994-1998:

http://www.mcsittel.com/assets/images/380waka08.jpg

--Russell

 

[desertv]

Anything using those grooved black boards with the pronged-back white plastic letters

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Anything using those grooved black boards with the pronged-back white plastic letters

...aka menu board.

That was the first rudimentary "character generator" before there were
true electronic character generators (and later Vidifonts, Chyrons, et al).

 

[azumanga]

Anything using those grooved black boards with the pronged-back white plastic letters

...aka menu board.

That was the first rudimentary "character generator" before there were
true electronic character generators (and later Vidifonts, Chyrons, et al).

Being in my thirties, the only time I saw that put into practice was during the opening credits for the talk show spoof Fernwood 2-Night, whose guests were listed on a menu-board device.

 

[Newname]

OK, I've got one...not amateurish, exactly, but truly awful, and I have the video evidence, courtesy of You Tube. For most of the 1970s, the highest rated TV news in the San Francisco Bay Area was Channel 7 News Scene. with Van Amburg. It got the credit for being a pioneer of the "happy talk" format, but they were also famous for sensationalist and bloody stories.

The graphics blue-screened behind the anchors was uniformly awful - in bright primary colors with poor comic-book caricatures of people. I remember reading at that time that they were "computer generated" graphics. If so, they were obviously very primitive. Even for the tasteless 70s, they were ugly.

This example features Van talking about Patty Hearst - with the predictable tacky graphic of Hearst. Also featured is some very clumsy camera work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nni8dYyEatY

That brings back memories...not the Patty Hearst story, as I was just a little too young to remember it, but the weirdly colored backgrounds and funky drawings were a staple of KGO news until the early 80s, when they finally got somewhat 'modern' graphics.