The BBC’s Global Visual Language

Not a pictorial version of Esperanto; rather, a set of design guidelines for bbc.co.uk:

The global visual language is a set of guidelines which aim to bring more consistency to the site by introducing an underlying design grid and consistent design patterns, icons, buttons, image sizes and a pan-BBC audio/video player.

according to BBC interaction designer and blogger Ben Hanbury. His main focus is the revised iPlayer site, which has the last seven days of the BBC’s TV and radio output available on-demand via a media player based on Flash – Adobe must be delighted.

That said, the new iPlayer site is one of the few examples I’ve known where Flash content does not play reliably. On my normal PC I get the useless and inaccurate message, “This content isn’t available at the moment.” Seems to be a firewall issue. I’ll post again if I can work out exactly what the problem is.

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