Designing ITV Daytime

Branding and design has played an important role in defining ITV’s hugely popular daytime programming. We talk to Fiona Skinner, who heads the in-house graphics team at ITV Daytime, about designing for Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women

ITV’s daytime programming reads as a list of abbreviations. Its core four shows – Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, This Morning, and Loose Women – are now so well-known that their branding can be boiled down to letters: GMB, L, TM and LW.

The decision to be this informal in the logos was led by the ITV audience. “Daytime audiences are fiercely loyal,” says Fiona Skinner, Head of Graphics at ITV Daytime. “Everything we’ve done is scrutinised by the audience. So you have to be respectful of that. You wait until the audience starts using the abbreviations. We didn’t ever use GMB on screen until we felt that the audience were calling it GMB.

“I think there is a different level of intimacy with the daytime presenters,” she continues. “Particularly in the morning, you’re watching them in your underwear. There’s a level of trust that I think the audience expect in the daytime presenters, and in us on the production side as well.”