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Lambie Nairn

Lambie-Nairn & Company Ltd. is a design and advertising agency based in the United Kingdom, run by Martin Lambie-Nairn and part of the WPP Group. The satirical puppet series Spitting Image originally included the credit, "Based on an original lunch with Martin Lambie-Nairn," as acknowledgement of his tangential influence on its creation. ^[1]

Lambie-Nairn created the red and ivory BBC News style used from 1999 until 2004

The agency has had a longstanding relationship with the BBC, designing much of the corporations output across its domestic and international television channels. The 1997 relaunch of the corporation's logo was designed by Lambie-Nairn utilising the Gill Sans font, which has remained across most channels. BBC News was also completely branded by the agency from 1997 until 2003, when the design of idents and graphics moved to an in-house development team.

Lambie-Nairn designed the famous block '4' introduced with the channel's launch in 1982, which remains in use today, though in different styles. The "4" logo was adapted from the numeral 4 in the Clarendon Bold typeface and appeared as nine blocks which arranged themselves on screen to make up the figure, symbolising C4's role as a publisher-broadcaster in bringing together disparate strands to form a coherent brand. ^[2]

The entire O₂ brand was developed by Lambie-Nairn as a new identity for BT Cellnet, a mobile phone communication company. The agency took the view that the services the company would provide were essentially similar to how oxygen is essential for life and so the brand name, the chemical symbol for oxygen was created.

1. ^ http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/interviews/spitting-image.html
2. ^ Lambie-Nairn, Martin: "Branding For Television: With Knobs On", Phaidon Press, 1998.

• Lambie-Nairn website featuring some past work