Easter Sunday 1997, a pop song and a candy-stripe motif.

Channel 5 went on air on 30 March 1997, Easter Sunday, as the UK’s fifth national terrestrial channel. The Independent’s report the next morning said its opening programme was a video of the Spice Girls singing their version of Manfred Mann’s “5-4-3-2-1”, followed by a showreel called “This Is 5!” that set out what the station called its “modern and mainstream” programming. The paper named the chief executive as David Elstein and the director of programmes as Dawn Airey, and reported Elstein saying viewers would see plenty of the band on air that year. Wikipedia adds that the launch went out at 6pm, introduced by presenters Tim Vine and Julia Bradbury.

The brand was built before the channel existed. Wikipedia says Wolff Olins and Saatchi & Saatchi were behind the pre-launch campaign “Give Me 5”, and that the identity combined a logo of a numeric “5” within a circle with a visual motif of candy stripes in five colours, based on the colour bars that engineers use to check picture output. Through the spring of 1997, it says, billboards showed the comedian Jack Docherty and other Channel 5 presenters.

The early on-air look leaned on that mark. Wikipedia says that between launch and 15 September 2002 Channel 5 kept a permanent digital on-screen graphic in the top left-hand corner of the picture, and that on some programmes an “end of part one” sign slid out of it before a commercial break and became a “part two” sign afterwards. It dates a set of “celebrity” idents, which put the candy stripe in a hole in the backdrop, to 6 September 1999, a refresh to 11 September 2000, and widescreen idents showing the logo on coloured backgrounds to 4 March 2002.

Five from 2002, Channel 5 again in 2011 and Viacom from 2014.

The name changed in the autumn of 2002. The Guardian reported on 11 August 2010, looking back, that Channel 5 had rebranded as Five in 2002, with Trevor Beattie’s agency TBWA brought in to promote it, and that the agency introduced the strapline “We are Five”. The then marketing director, it reported, put it this way: “Channel Five is a name; Five is a brand.” Wikipedia dates the new look to 16 September 2002, with live-action idents, a logo that slid in from the left of the screen, frequent use of the Helvetica typeface and no on-screen graphic. It says a lower-case “five” had already been used in some idents since launch.

The Five name went through two further looks. Wikipedia says that on 6 October 2008 the lower-case logo was replaced by an upper-case “FIVE” in a circle, a rebrand it credits to DixonBaxi, and that a July 2009 refresh made the logo larger and turned the circle red.

Then the channel changed hands. Wikipedia says Richard Desmond’s publishing group Northern & Shell completed its takeover on 23 July 2010. The Guardian’s report of 11 August 2010 said Desmond would scrap the Five branding and on-screen logo and reinstate the launch name, Channel 5, in a new style. Wikipedia says the restored name appeared on screen on 14 February 2011, keeping the red circle but replacing the word “FIVE” with the numeral “5”, with an extended version that set the word “CHANNEL” in capitals to its left; new idents placed the “5” in a large studio with a screen as backdrop, and programme preview cards used Gotham in upper case.

The next owner came from the United States. BBC News reported on 1 May 2014 that Viacom, the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, had agreed to buy Channel 5 from Northern & Shell, and The Guardian reported on 10 September 2014 that Viacom had completed the takeover after clearance from the European Commission, announcing joint commissions with MTV UK and Nickelodeon on the same day. Wikipedia says Viacom re-merged with CBS in December 2019 to form ViacomCBS, later Paramount Global, and it currently describes the broadcaster, Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, as part of Skydance’s UK and Australia division.

A numeral that has stayed while its frame changed.

A television channel’s identity is seen in fragments, often for a few seconds at a time. The steadiest piece is the on-screen bug, a small version of the logo that sits in a corner of the picture through most programmes, so it has to stay readable over any image, light or dark, and at a size where fine detail disappears. Between programmes the channel speaks more loudly through idents: short films or animations that end on the logo and tell the viewer where they are. Around them sit end-boards that list what is coming next, promos for individual shows, and menus and listings in electronic guides, each a place where the logo meets type, colour and motion.

Many channels are known by a number or a few letters, which keeps the mark compact enough for a bug, a remote-control button or an app icon. When a broadcaster runs several channels, the identity often becomes a family, with sister channels sharing a typeface, a shape or part of a name and changing colour, a suffix or a numeral to tell them apart. Streaming adds another layer: the same name may appear as an app, as a hub inside someone else’s service or as a small label above a programme’s title, sometimes with no live channel attached at all. For designers, the practical point is that a channel identity is a kit of moving parts — a corner mark, an ident, a promo template, an icon — and each has to work on its own, in motion and at a glance.

A segmented 5 in 2016 and a single name, 5, in 2025.

Viacom’s rebrand reached the screen on 11 February 2016. It’s Nice That reported on 10 February 2016 that the new identity was built around the idea of “spirited TV with an emotional heart”, overseen by vice president of marketing Jo Bacon and led creatively by Jody Malam, on secondment from his role as creative director of MTV UK. It said the New York agency Gretel worked on the logo and on-screen presentation, and that the Los Angeles agency Troika worked with the in-house team 5Creative on the route definition, the break bumpers and the logo for My5, the renamed Demand 5. The new logo, it said, was segmented into five parts, with different colours and textures to suit different moods and styles of programme, and the look extended to 5Star, formerly 5*, and 5USA.

Transform magazine wrote on 12 February 2016 that this was the sixth rendition of the logo since 1997, that the project had taken 13 months in total, and that Bacon had described the previous logo as “tabloid-esque”. The Drum reported on 10 February 2016 that the logo was animated in five different formats and could be adapted for multiple screens, and said the channel had gone five years without a rebrand. The Independent noted on 9 February 2016 that a numeral built from coloured blocks recalled the identity that Channel 4 had set aside the year before. Wikipedia dates a new set of idents placing the logo on pink, green, orange, blue, teal and black backdrops to 26 February 2020.

In 2025 the name itself was unified. Creative Review reported on 13 March 2025 that the broadcaster had relaunched as 5, bringing its linear channel and the My5 streaming platform under a single brand, and that its segmented “5” logo had been subtly reimagined to give a consistent look across its channels. The refresh, commissioned by 5 Marketing, was developed with the agency Pablo, alongside a campaign called “It’s all on 5” that included a full wrap of the King’s Cross Underground corridor in London. Wikipedia dates the switch to 12 March 2025 and says pre-launch posters showed the same “5” in a new yellow, while the sister channels 5Star, 5USA, 5Select and 5Action kept their names.

For a design guide, Channel 5 shows how a broadcaster can change its name twice and its owner three times while holding on to one asset, the numeral 5, set in a circle in 1997 and later split into five moving parts. Compare Channel 4, whose numeral logo the 2016 segmented 5 was set beside, and MTV, a sister network under Viacom from 2014. For this guide we use five red, relaunch yellow and candy-stripe teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Channel 5’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.