Test Card
The design challenge here was to reinvent the television test card for regular consumers to make the most of their HD TVs.
It had to be fresh, functional, and attractive. Competitor Sky TV decided to simply copy the famous BBC Test Card F (that featured 8 year-old Carole Hersee, who holds the record for the world’s longest television appearance), and this was less an act of design than it was an exercise in nostalgia. Originally test cards were made for engineers at the television station, whereas this had to be for average viewers at home, so it makes little sense to use such a cluttered and complicated design.
This test card, therefore, was stripped down to its essentials and given jargon-free labels. It also has the advantage of using 3 models with a range of skin tones and hair colours, a better reference for adjusting for natural colours for any people pictured on screen.
- concept, design, compositing: Ryan Gilmore
- photography: Phil Smith