The new Formula 1 season has also heralded a new design for the BBC Sport Online’s Formula 1 page.

It’s clear that British interest in Formula 1 has increased in recent years thanks to a number of factors not least the ‘Lewis effect’ and all the talk of Jenson Button as a possible new British World Champion, Jenson’s girlfriend certainly believes he can do it.
 
The BBC is hoping this interest will continue to grow and has invested a reported £200m into bringing the sport back to the BBC including bringing back Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain as the theme tune for their programming.

Everybody loves a good theme tune, but what really caught my eye was the new design of BBC Sport Online’s Formula 1 page with its  black skin and abundant blue, yellow and red go-faster stripes.  There are lots of other differences such as a much larger selection of external links to other websites (more so than on other BBC Sport Online pages), insider gossip from their ‘mole’ and more which you can all explore on your own time.

The page has a similar look and feel to BBC iplayer with the same black skin as opposed to the white background that is used across the rest of the BBC Sport Online pages.  This may well be a subconscious reminder to the viewer that the highlights are available on iplayer through some sort of visual empathy…or it may simply be that one of the designers at the Beeb thinks the black skin is cooler.

What I did find a bit strange is that as soon as you click onto a Formula 1 story the next page you see is back to a white background. I wonder whether all the sports covered by the BBC online team will begin to have their own identity with different skin colours, each one allowed to stray a little further from the general BBC Sport Online look and feel or whether Formula 1 is a one off…I am also starting to wonder if any of you noticed any of this too or if you care?!?

By Alex Coulson on March 31st, 2009

Tags: BBC, Default, Digital marketing, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Media