From test pictures in Stockholm to a company with its own name.

SVT is the short name of Sveriges Television AB, the Swedish national public television broadcaster. English Wikipedia says it is one of three public broadcasting companies in Sweden, alongside Sveriges Radio and Sveriges Utbildningsradio, and that the three are owned by an independent foundation. Its schedule is organised around its channels, including SVT1 and SVT2, and its news programmes Rapport and Aktuellt.

Television in Sweden began inside a radio company. English Wikipedia says radio had been organised from the 1920s as a limited company, AB Radiotjänst, on a model similar to Britain’s. Test transmissions of television began in June 1954, and the first were made on 29 October 1954 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. On 4 September 1956, the article says, Radiotjänst began official transmissions from the new Nacka transmitter. Regular programming followed in 1957, when Radiotjänst was renamed Sveriges Radio, and the news programme Aktuellt was first broadcast in 1958.

A second channel came at the end of the next decade. English Wikipedia says TV2 launched on 5 December 1969, and the original channel became TV1; the two were meant to compete with each other within the same company. The headquarters building in Stockholm, TV-huset on Oxenstiernsgatan in the Östermalm district, opened its first stage on 30 October 1967 and was completed and officially opened on the same day TV2 began. The article dates colour broadcasting to 1966 for the first transmission and to 1970 for regular colour, and teletext to 1978.

The name SVT dates from a reorganisation. English Wikipedia says that from 1 July 1979 Sveriges Radio AB became the parent of four subsidiaries, one of which was Sveriges Television, responsible for all television except educational programmes. The abbreviation SVT was chosen over STV, the same article says, because STV was already used within the European Broadcasting Union by Scottish Television. Since 1979, English Wikipedia adds, SVT, Sveriges Radio and Sveriges Utbildningsradio have been sibling companies sharing some joint services.

The channels were reorganised again in 1987, when TV1 was renamed Kanal 1, carrying most programmes made in Stockholm, while TV2 brought together the regional districts and the Rapport news desk. English Wikipedia says regular high-definition broadcasting began on the SVT HD channel on 22 October 2006.

A British designer in 1980, a starflower in 2001 and new channel looks in 2008 and 2012.

The first SVT logo followed soon after the company was formed. English Wikipedia says the SVT logo introduced in October 1980, together with the separate channel logos for TV1 and TV2, was created by the British designer Sid Sutton. That set of marks served the company through the years of TV1 and TV2 and the change to Kanal 1.

The next major change came with a new schedule. English Wikipedia says that in 2001 SVT introduced a new logo along with new programme schedules, which made SVT1 the broader mainstream channel. The new logo combined a star and a flower and was made by English & Pockett. The article explains the symbol as a joining of the two channels: the star stood for SVT1 and the petals around it for SVT2. At the same time, the article says, the main news bulletins swapped channels, with Aktuellt moving to SVT2 and Rapport to SVT1.

Channel identities were reworked several times after that. English Wikipedia says that on 25 August 2008 new logos and channel identities were introduced across the network, with the children’s channel Barnkanalen renamed SVTB and the news channel 24 returning to the name SVT24.

A fuller account of a later round comes from the trade press. Cartoon Brew reported on 14 August 2012 that the New York studio Trollbäck + Company had unveiled a new look for the children’s channel SVT Barnkanalen, with a new logo, station IDs, transitions, bumpers and lower-thirds. The report described the project as the culmination of a new era for SVT, with Trollbäck + Company serving as the creative agency that helped reimagine the overall SVT brand.

The same report described the channel looks one by one. For Barnkanalen the studio drew on Alice in Wonderland, the textiles of Alexander Girard and the architecture of the Eames office, and filmed network presenters jumping on trampolines in slow motion. The SVT1 IDs used balloons, croquet balls and amusement parks; the SVT2 IDs ended with scene elements folding into the channel’s curved “2”; and SVT24 carried on the colour-saturated theme. Cartoon Brew quoted executive creative director Jakob Trollbäck: “We wanted to shake up the perception of public service TV with this rebrand.”

Initials fixed in 1979, symbols redrawn around them.

A broadcaster’s identity often lives as much in its channel names as in its mark. M+AD Daily reported on 30 September 2016 that TVNZ would rename TV ONE as TVNZ 1 and TV2 as TVNZ 2 from 2 October that year, in a rebrand produced by its in-house Blacksand creative team, with new channel idents carrying original music and a special TVNZ font. TVNZ’s marketing head, Sarah Finnie, told the site the aim was for the channels to “look and feel like one family of content brands”.

Initials can also carry a long lineage of older names. The Honolulu Advertiser reported on 4 March 2007 that the station behind KBS made its first broadcast as JODK in Seoul on 16 February 1927, took the call sign HL in 1947 and was renamed in 1973. When reading a broadcaster’s identity, look at which letters lead each channel name, which earlier names they replaced, and what the idents between programmes are asked to carry.

Three letters held steady while symbols and channel looks changed around them.

SVT’s identity begins with a practical choice. English Wikipedia says the company took the initials SVT in 1979 because STV was already in use by Scottish Television within the European Broadcasting Union. Those three letters have stayed in place since, through the 1980 logo by Sid Sutton, the 2001 starflower and the channel looks that followed.

The symbols around the letters have tended to describe the channel structure. The 2001 mark by English & Pockett, English Wikipedia says, joined a star for SVT1 and petals for SVT2 into one figure, at the moment the two channels were given more distinct roles. Earlier, Sid Sutton had drawn separate logos for TV1 and TV2 next to the company mark in 1980.

Idents have carried much of the on-air character. Cartoon Brew’s 2012 report described a flexible system that let SVT repurpose its material for IDs of almost any length, alongside channel-specific themes: everyday colour and play for SVT1, scenes of people and nature folding into the “2” for SVT2, and saturated colour carried over to SVT24. Barnkanalen received a look of its own, built from bright shapes and patterns for a young audience.

The building has its own place in the story. TV-huset in Stockholm, which English Wikipedia says opened in full on 5 December 1969, the same day TV2 started, gave the second channel and the company a single base, and the regional news programmes that began in 1970 with Sydnytt from Malmö spread the SVT name around the country.

For a design guide, SVT shows how a broadcaster can keep the same three letters for decades while the symbol and the channel graphics around them are redrawn to match each new channel structure. Compare NRK and Yle, public broadcasters in neighbouring Nordic countries. For this guide we use blue, gold and night with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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