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Radio-Canada
TM54

Trademark: TM54

Title: Radio-Canada

Year: 1966

Designer: Hubert Tison

Studio: Radio-Canada Graphic Arts Service

Client: Société Radio-Canada
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Sector: Television + Radio Broadcasting / Programming

 

Additional

Archive Repository:

Hubert Tison

Radio-Canada

CBC

1966

 

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September 1, 1966 marked a new horizon in Canadian broadcasting with the introduction of colour television.

 

To mark this metamorphosis, Radio-Canada conducted a competition amongst its employees in search of a new symbol that would represent this significant technological juncture. Issued in March 1966, designers and creative staff had barely a month to submit their ideas for consideration.

 

The winner, Hubert Tison of Radio-Canada Graphic Arts Service in Montréal, came up with the idea of a stylized multi-coloured butterfly.

 

“Man has always admired the butterfly for its multitude of colours. I chose the butterfly because it transmits the colour message very well; In the framework of the electronic mechanism of television, the butterfly brings grace, lightness, poetry, freshness, finesse, colour.”

 

The symbol, which was only originally intended to be a temporary solution to introduce colour to the small screen, became so evocative and well received that it ended up being used for six years.

 

Société Radio-Canada (now called Ici Radio-Canada Télé) is the only francophone network in Canada to broadcast terrestrially in all Canadian provinces. It is the French speaking counterpart to the English speaking Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada). Tison’s symbol was also simultaneously adopted by the CBC, but it was in Québec, by a Radio-Canada designer that it was first created (and hence the crediting).

  

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Additional

Archive Repository:

Hubert Tison

Radio-Canada

CBC

1966

 

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